


Bad Moon Rising

by SandM1827



Series: Charming Wayward Sons [4]
Category: Sons of Anarchy, Supernatural, Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Gen, Humor, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-08
Updated: 2020-09-18
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:36:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 3
Words: 37,887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24066703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SandM1827/pseuds/SandM1827
Summary: They weren’t meant to end with a crudely marked grave in the middle of fucking nowhere.
Relationships: Clay Morrow/Gemma Teller Morrow, Jax Teller/Dean Winchester, Juice Ortiz/Stiles Stilinski, Past Gemma Teller Morrow/Sheriff Stilinski
Series: Charming Wayward Sons [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/445267
Comments: 34
Kudos: 91





	1. Four Months & Forty Years

**Author's Note:**

> Unbeta'd.  
> Warning: Implied/referenced drug abuse.  
> Gif Set: [Chapter One](https://stilinski-ortiz-dolan.tumblr.com/post/617322136132026368/charming-wayward-sons-verse-bad-moon)
> 
> *This one's been a long time coming, I apologize for the wait. 
> 
> **This addition to the verse will see us through season 2 of Sons of Anarchy, season 3a of TW, and season 4 of Supernatural. This particular chapter is sort of set in 4x01 of Supernatural. The chapters will end up being much longer starting with chapter 2, this ones sort of a kick off point to start us off.
> 
> *** Jody's backstory has been changed a bit, just set pre-series rather than in season 5 of supernatural, because I wanted to introduce her sooner. So she's been in on the supernatural secret for some time.

The cheap motels, lumpy beds with scratchy blankets, bad diner food, and the numb feeling in his ass when he dismounted his bike after a long day on the road, Jax could deal with that. It was the grief, the agony and the sorrow that had encompassed his heart in the wake of Dean’s death that he couldn’t get used to; he would live with it the rest of his life and he was sure it would feel just as painful in forty years as it had over the last four months. Some days, though, the disappointment was worse, reaching across the bed with a small glimmer of hope, only for it to be dashed when he found nothing but a cold, vacant space beside him.

A ragged sigh from the other bed in the dinky motel room was always waiting to ease Jax through the waves of sadness and loss that greeted him with the morning sun. He wasn’t sure if Opie had given up on sleep entirely or if he intentionally woke up early, anticipating Jax would need to be led into the day.

“I don’t know why I think he’s gonna be there,” Jax mumbled, wrapping the rough fabric of the comforter around his shoulders. “He never stayed long enough for me to get used to him sleeping next to me.”

“You want him to be there,” Opie murmured, understanding Jax’s grief better than anyone else could. “I keep waking up, staring at the ceiling, thinking I’m still in prison. I always hope that it’s not a dream. If I’m still there, it means Donna’s at home, taking care our kids, and all this is just a nightmare.”

“I’m sorry, Ope,” He’d give anything for things to be different, to change the past and somehow get back everything they’d lost. “What happened to Dean…he did that to save his brother, and I…I understand it. But Donna…”

“Don’t.” Opie stopped him, just as he had every other time Jax had tried to bring Donna up, tried to get Opie to talk about his wife in more than just passing. “We need to get up.”

“Ope—“

“We’ve got a long ride today,” Opie grunted, kicking off the blankets and climbing out of bed. “We need to get going if you still want to stop and see Dean on the way.”

“Yeah. Okay, Ope,” Jax wouldn’t push his brother to talk when he didn’t want to or wasn’t ready to, and he wasn’t going to make them late for their meeting either. “You’re right. We should get dressed and head out.”

“You gonna call home today?” Opie asked, eyes flicking to the cellphone on the nightstand. “Check on your kid?”

“I don’t know,” He’d avoided phone calls and emails, any form of communication that might draw him home before he was ready. “Are you?”

“No,” Opie shook his head. “Kids are fine with Pop and Mary.”

“Yeah,” There was no doubt that their families had stepped up to care for their children when they couldn’t. “Abel’s good with Stiles and Gem.”

“Yeah,” Opie agreed. “He is.”

* * *

Parenting was no joke, Stiles knew that a hell of a lot better than he ever wanted to. He wasn’t sure if he ever wanted children himself, but he somehow found himself playing the role of stand-in father for his baby nephew while his brother was out of town. When he’d accepted the task, he thought Jax would be home in a few weeks at the most, but with four months behind them and no sign of him, Stiles had resigned himself to playing daddy for the foreseeable future.

He’d moved into Jax’s house over the summer, dedicated his days and nights, all his free time to Abel. Abel became his entire world; everything he did was for him. The only time he spent away from the infant was during work hours and school, yet even then the baby didn’t stray far from Stiles thoughts.

It was hard not to be a little bitter about it sometimes, after all, he was seventeen years old, he should have been out with his friends, having the time of his life, not caring for a child that wasn’t his. That wasn’t to say he wasn’t having fun watching Abel change and grow from day-to-day, it was something he would cherish every day, but he couldn’t help but think the memories he was making with every milestone he was there to witness belonged to someone else. As much as he loved Abel, there was still an internal struggle warring inside of Stiles that made it difficult for him to enjoy their time together.

Juice made it all more bearable. At the beginning of the summer, his friend had taken it upon himself to keep Stiles company, to watch Abel for a few minutes so Stiles could shower or cook a meal to make sure her was eating. They fell into a nice routine, the two of them, a routine that was interrupted briefly when Juice’s past had reared its ugly head, but they’d since found that balance again, a balance and so much more.

“Morning,” Juice greeted him with a soft kiss to his lips. “I’ll take Abel if you want to pour yourself a cup of coffee.”

“He’s all yours,” Stiles yawned, handing the baby off to the other man. “We wake you?”

“He did, but as soon as you’re up, I don’t see the point in staying in bed by myself,” Juice shrugged, adjusting the infant more comfortably in his arms. “Do you still want me to bring him home tonight?”

“Yeah, I want to check in with Derek, see how his search for Erica and Boyd is going,” The search had gone pretty much nowhere throughout the entire summer; he doubted the tides had turned much since school had started back up. “If something comes up with the club, you can just leave him with Gemma.”

“Got it,” Juice nodded, smiling down at the baby. “You’re not coming into work then, right, since you’re going to see Derek?”

“I’ll try to be there once I’m done at Derek’s,” He couldn’t afford to take a day off and TM couldn’t afford for him to take a day off. “We’re shorthanded at the garage with Jax and Opie gone and Bobby Elvis locked up. I can’t put anymore strain on the rest of you. I just need…a few more hours in the day.”

“Maybe you should think about sleeping at home in Beacon Hills instead of here,” Juice suggested, moving to sit at the kitchen table. “You wouldn’t have that long commute to school in the morning.”

“Then I wouldn’t get to see you as often,” Stiles said teasingly, broaching the topic they’d only skirted around over the last several weeks. “I don’t want to lose…this.”

“We won’t,” Juice said confidently. “But I do think…we kind of jumped off the deep end into all of this.”

“That’s putting it lightly,” They’d gone from friends to happy family almost overnight immediately following Juice’s latest stint of SAMCRO rehab. “You want to slow down?”

“I want to talk to your dad,” Juice decided, meeting Stiles eyes. “A show of respect, you know.”

“I can’t say I wasn’t expecting that,” Stiles had been waiting for Juice to make that request since they’d more or less moved in together. “I know he’s meeting with Charming’s new chief today, but you guys could probably have lunch tomorrow. You want me to set it up?”

“I can do it.”

“Okay,” Stiles nodded, turning to pour himself a cup of coffee. “Hey, um, have you or the guys or someone from another charter heard from Jax or Opie?”

“I haven’t, but someone has to be in contact with them or we’d all be out looking for them,” Juice reasoned, rubbing comforting circles over the baby’s back. “They’re still not answering for you?”

“Calls, texts, emails,” Stiles hadn’t gotten a response of any kind from his brothers since they’d left town. “I know they’re grieving, but I would think that loss would fuel a need to know that the family they still have is all right. That their children are all right. I feel like they should have some deep-seated paternal instinct to check in on their kids.”

“Not everybody has those instincts, Stiles.”

“Well, they should.”

* * *

It would have been an understatement to say that things had been tense between Gemma and Clay in the months since Donna’s murder and Stiles act of arson. It was almost a sick stroke of luck that SAMCRO and Teller-Morrow was understaffed, keeping the club president too busy to retaliate against Gemma’s youngest son. Even so, it was a tightrope walk with Gemma uncharacteristically playing peacekeeper, making sure the pair didn’t kill each other.

“Stiles has a shift at TM this afternoon,” She lessened the blow of bad news with a full plate of breakfast and a steaming hot cup of coffee. “It’d be best if you had some club business to do.”

“I’ve told you before, I’m not upending my life for your precious _**baby**_ ,” Clay sneered, shoving the food and coffee away, letting it splash and spill over the table. “That little bastard is lucky he’s still allowed to work at my garage. That motherfucker should be grateful I’m even allowing him to step foot in Charming.”

“Jesus Christ, Clay, he set the chapel table on fire, he didn’t pull a gun on you,” It was hard to take her husband’s feud with her son seriously when he was acting like a child. “You’re like a three year old throwing a tantrum because your favorite toy broke. The last I checked, the table was still standing, just a little charred. It adds character.”

“ _ **Your son**_ threatened to take my club from me,” Clay growled, rage filled eyes boring into hers. “I’m not letting something like that slide.”

“He’s a teenage boy,” As they well knew, teenagers often had a flare for the dramatics. “You’re acting like he’s a member of a rival M.C., an enemy.”

“That’s exactly what he is,” Clay declared, lips pulled back in a vicious snarl. “He thinks he can take my club from me, then you’re goddamn right he’s the enemy, and I’ll goddamn treat him like one.”

“We made a deal, you and me,” Gemma reminded him, unwilling to let her husband renege on their agreement. “I keep him out of the clubhouse, out of club business, and you don’t retaliate against him.”

“Then you’d better hold up your end,” Clay warned her. “If and when your oldest decides to show his face at my table, you better make damn sure he does too.”

“Jax and Opie will be home soon.”

“They got a week before I strip that VP patch off Jax’s kutte, _**permanently**_.”

* * *

Word had come in about Charming hiring a new Chief of Police in early August. Upon her arrival, Deputy Hale had suggested John set a meeting with her to give her a rundown on how things worked between the Sons of Anarchy and Charming P.D. While John had no intention of trying to sway the new chief one way or another regarding the club, there were things they needed to discuss. He’d given her a few weeks to settle in before dropping by her office.

“Chief Jody Mills? Sheriff John Stilinski,” He introduced himself with a polite smile. “It’s nice to meet you.”

“Sheriff Stilinski? Out of Beacon Hills, right? Your father was chief here prior to Chief Unser,” Chief Mills gave his hand a hearty shake. “Deputy Hale’s been filling me in on some history; you came up a few times.”

“I’ve heard a little about you too, from, uh, Bobby Singer.”

“Oh,” Chief Mills faltered, obviously not expecting the name-drop. “How do you know Bobby?”

“Let’s just say Beacon Hills is the kind of town that requires someone like Bobby’s services from time to time,” Truth be told, John hadn’t spoken to Bobby in length about the new chief, but he had enough information to know she was in on the ‘secret’, so to speak. “Not unlike Sioux Falls.”

“Another sheriff caught up in the wacky world of the supernatural,” Jody sighed, a small grin playing on her lips. “You have a ghost or demon problem in Beacon Hills?”

“Occasionally,” More so when the Winchesters were nearby, but John knew that was no fault of theirs, more luck of the draw. “Werewolves mostly. Although, a few months ago we had a kanima.”

“A kanima?”

“It’s a werewolf/lizard hybrid with a paralytic toxin in its claws.”

“Wow.”

“You don’t have to worry about that kind of thing here in Charming. It’s manageable on that front.” The small town had its share of vengeful spirits, witches, and other entities, but at nowhere near the same rate as Beacon Hills. “Can I ask how you got involved with all that?”

“Oh, uh… Something happened a few years ago with my husband and son… I-I lost them,” Jody confessed, grief clouding her features. “Bobby, Sam and Dean, they helped me. I’ve, um, I’ve tried to help them ever since. I’ve learned what I could to keep the citizens in my district safe.”

“I’m sorry about your family.”

“Thank you,” Jody said tightly, clearing her throat pointedly. “How did you get involved in the supernatural stuff?”

“A good friend of mine, Talia Hale, she and her family were werewolves,” After they’d gotten to know each other and become friends, Talia had shared her secret with him, trusting him not to betray her family. “And my son Stiles, his half-brother, Jax Teller, has been close to the Winchesters since high school, so…”

“Jax Teller,” Jody glanced down at the file lying open on her desk. “The currently MIA vice president of the Sons of Anarchy Motorcycle Club’s Charming charter.”

“Redwood Original,” John corrected out of instinct. “He and Opie Winston are taking some time away. They, um, they both lost people they loved very much.”

“I’ve read the report on Donna Winston’s murder. It’s awful,” Jody shook her head, trying in vain to rid her mind of the detailed description of the brutality Donna had faced in her final moments. “You knew her well?”

“She and Stiles were close. She was like an older sister to him,” Stiles used to say that Donna was the only woman to have loved him since the day he was born. “She has two little kids at home, you know.”

“I know.”

“This office has been ripe with corruption and split loyalties since Unser took office,” John hoped the change of power, someone from outside Charming, like Chief Mills, could clean things up, make Charming PD respectable again. “I don’t know if there’s anyone here, save for your and Deputy Hale, that will put in the time to find Donna’s killer. The others…they know it will lead right back to SAMCRO.”

“You sound pretty confident of that yourself,” Jody noted. “Do you know who killed her?”

“I don’t know who pulled the trigger,” And for Charming’s sake, he wasn’t sure he wanted to. “Stiles believes his stepfather, Clay Morrow, was behind it. He’s not the shooter, he has an irrefutable alibi, but Stiles is certain he gave the order.”

“That’s helpful,” She scribbled the information on a notepad. “I’ll look into it.”

“Tread carefully,” John cautioned her, having the scars to prove just how dangerous Clay could be when backed into a corner. “If you get too close, he won’t care that your law enforcement. He will not hesitate to take you out.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Don’t judge the club by their president,” John was willing to give the rest of the club the benefit of the doubt, he thought she should too. “They’ve done bad things, I won’t try to sell them to you as good people, but they’re not all bad. They don’t set out to hurt people. Unlike Clay, most of them can feel guilt.”

“I’d accuse you of being bias, given your son’s familial connection to the club, but I’m not getting that vibe from you,” Jody acknowledged. “I’d appreciate more of your insight on the M.C.”

“I can’t,” The cop in him felt a sense of obligation to tell her everything he knew, but the father in him knew that was a line he couldn’t cross without betraying his son. “That’s my son’s family. He comes first, before the job and the oath I took. I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to apologize for that,” She smiled softly. “I understand. I had a son too.”

“I’m happy to help with anything else Charming or supernatural related,” He wouldn’t leave her to fend for herself in a town as tempestuous as Charming. “And I promise to wrangle my son if he gets to be too much for you when he’s in town.”

“You think he’ll be a problem for me?”

“Not intentionally. He means well, he really does, he just goes a little overboard sometimes,” That might’ve been the understatement of the century, but he didn’t want to frighten her. “I’ll be honest with you. He probably has a key to every office and holding cell in this station. You could change all the locks, but he’ll find a way to make himself another set. He doesn’t have nefarious motives for any of it, he just likes to help and make sure things get done. Once he knows you’re not another Unser, he’ll try to work with you instead of around you.”

“I’m going to go out on a limb as say you’ve got a budding detective on your hands.”

“One with a slight problem with authority,” It was a fun combination. “He comes on strong, rubs people the wrong way. I know most don’t see it, but he really is a good kid.”

“I look forward to meeting him,” Jody grinned, listening intently as he went on about his son. “I appreciate you coming in and offering your assistance with Charming and all that supernatural stuff. This move… it’s been an adjustment, to say the least.”

“I get it, I’ve been there,” From Charming to the military to Beacon Hills, John had his fair share of rough adjustments. “If you need anything else, don’t hesitate to reach out.”

“Actually, there is something,” Jody started, expression growing serious as the grin vanished from her lips. “I’ve tried calling Bobby a few times, just to check in, but I haven’t been able to get a hold of him. I’m starting to get worried.”

“You heard about Dean, right?”

“Yeah. Yes,” Jody confirmed, a grim lit to her tone. “It’s… I still can’t believe it.”

“He was a like a son to Bobby, you know,” The other man was taking that loss as well as could be expected for someone who lost a child. “I’ve only spoken to him once since he went back to Sioux Falls. His son Derek travels up that way every weekend to see that he’s alright. From what I’ve heard, he’s hanging in there.”

“And Sam?”

“I don’t know,” The remaining Winchester brother had left Charming in a hurry and hadn’t returned or kept in touch. “No one’s heard from him in four months.”

* * *

Since leaving Charming in their rearview to make peace with their grief, Jax and Opie hadn’t stayed in one place long, unwilling to get comfortable anywhere—not that it was possible to get comfortable in seedy motel rooms. It didn’t matter how far they rode, the distance they covered, Jax always made a point to return to that stretch of land off the side of the highway a few miles out from New Harmony, Indiana.

“Weathers changing, summers winding down, nights are cooler,” Jax spoke to the grave marker protruding from the dead grass. “Ope and I were talking about heading up to Maine or Connecticut, watching the leaves change or something stupid like that, but, uh, it’s probably not going to happen.”

He never knew what to say when he spoke to Dean these days. He alternated between filling Dean in on what he’d been up to and what he planned to do, and chattering nonsensically just to fill the silence.

“I can’t stay long this time,” He never stayed long, always found a reason to leave before the tears burning in his eyes had a chance to trickle down his cheek. “I have, uh, I have something to do.”

He hated saying that, hated how it sounded as it passed through his lips, as if there was something more important than Dean, or worse, making it seem like he was moving on already.

“It’s Sam. We have to meet Sam,” He said by way of explanation, hoping to ease his own guilt. “I’m keeping an eye on him, like you do with Stiles if I were the one….”

It wasn’t the full truth, but it was all he could bear to give Dean without flat out lying to him about his whereabouts or the nature of the meeting.

“He’s okay, you should know that,” The younger Winchester was struggling to cope with his brother’s death, sure, but he had found a way to channel his grief into something worthwhile. “He’s gettin’ through it.”

That’s all any of them could do when closure was a myth and acceptance eluded them.

“He misses you,” They all did, Dean and Donna’s deaths hung over them like dark clouds, following them wherever they went, inescapable. “You’re gonna kill him when you see what he did to your ride, man.”

‘ _When_ ’ never ‘ _if_ ’. Jax could never bring himself to speak or even think of Dean in the past tense or uncertain terms. He’d meant what he’d said to Stiles before he left, his and Dean’s story wasn’t over yet, they weren’t meant to end with a crudely marked grave in the middle of fucking nowhere.

“I thought you’d be home by now.”

When he set out on this journey with Opie, he’d let himself believe that it would be a month at the most before he received a phone call from Bobby or Sam saying Dean was somehow alive and well. He thought they’d both be home by now, restarting their lives and raising Abel together, just like they’d talked about.

“Come on, man,” Jax pleaded with him, wiping tears from his eyes. “You always…you always fight your way out. Quit screwing around and just do it already.”

Fuck, Jax needed Dean to do it one more time. He needed Dean to pull a rabbit out of his hat, to show up with that cocky grin, arms spread wide, asking who missed him the most. The longer he was gone and the more visits Jax paid to his grave, the harder it was to believe a miraculous resurrection was just around the corner.

“Please, Dean…”

* * *

School had proved difficult enough for Stiles when he was battling sleep deprivation and dealing with strange looks from his peers because there was spit-up on his hoodie, the last thing he needed, the absolute last thing, was a well-meaning guidance counselor pulling him into her office to discuss a change in his behavior.

“You’re falling asleep in class. Your teachers have noticed you haven’t been socializing with your usual group of friends, or anyone else,” Ms. Morrell folded her hands nearly on top of her desk, leveling him with a look of concern. “You’re tardy to class most mornings. You’ve been snapping at your teachers and other students. Something’s obviously going on.”

“Are my grades slipping?” Stiles didn’t go to school to socialize or play nice with the other kids, he was there to be taught things he already knew so he could graduate and move on with his life. “Has my GPA plummeted?”

“You know it hasn’t.”

“Then I guess we’re done here.”

“Something is going on with you, Stiles,” Morrell was as astute as ever with that determination. “I’m here to help you. There are resources to get you through whatever it is you’re going through.”

“Right,” He couldn’t help but roll his eyes dramatically. “So if I told you my sister and brother-in-law were both murdered, you’d, what, suggest grief counseling?”

“I would,” She nodded, but refrained from handing out some stupid pamphlet. “There’s no shame in admitting you need help coming to terms with your loss.”

“Both my brothers up and bailed after my sister and brother-in-law were killed,” They’d hit the road and hadn’t looked back, leaving their children and lives behind without a second glance. “What would you suggest for that?”

“You feel abandon by your brothers,” Morrell noted, sidestepping the question. “Have you spoken to anyone about that?”

“I don’t have time to speak to a friend or a professional. I barely have time to have a phone conversation with my dad or do my laundry,” As it was, he’d resorted to short text messages to his father and unwittingly leaving the laundry and other household chores to Juice. “I have a baby with a heart condition at home. I have a niece and nephew who don’t understand why someone would unload a flurry of bullets into their mother’s head. My boyfriend’s recovering from a drug-overdose and a backwoods detox. I haven’t seen or heard from my brothers in months, I don’t know if they’re alive or dead in a ditch somewhere. And on top of all that, after I spend all day in this hellhole, I have a two-hour drive and a five-hour shift at work to get through before I can finally go home, put the baby to bed, and do my homework.”

“You have a lot on your plate,” Morrell concluded, continuing to point out the obvious as only a pseudo-shrink could. “Have you thought about applying for early graduation?”

“Every day since kindergarten.”

“With the credits you’ve earned taking classes at the community college both in Beacon Hills and in Charming, if you keep your grades up, you could be in line to graduate by the end of this school year, possibly sooner depending on how your credits transfer,” Morrell said as skimmed through his student file. “Would that be something you’d be interested in?”

“Absolutely.”

* * *

Stability had never been Juice’s strong suit, chaos was always there to disrupt his life one way or another. He’d never thrived in the chaos or embraced it as some did, but he could weather its storm with the best of them. He knew how to ride it out until it passed and gave way to an unassuming calm. However, he didn’t always know how to strap himself in for that bumpy ride, sometimes he had to be forcibly tied down, and that’s exactly what Gemma and Piney had done for him over the summer.

The old man and the matriarch had saved his life, and not for the first time. They held his hand through the worst of it, just as they had when he’d first arrived in Charming as a strung-out kid in search of a home. And just like that kid, once he was standing on his own two feet once more, he tried to repay their kindness any way he could, being their helpful little errand boy, doing whatever they asked in hopes of earning their trust and respect.

For the most part, Piney had brushed him off with a paternal cuff to the head and order for him to stop acting like a goddamn prospect – didn’t he know they’d all fallen off the wagon a time or two? Gemma, on the other hand, used his need to regain her approval as a means to keep him close, giving him nonsensical tasks just so he’d have to report back to her throughout the day and she could see how he was doing.

“Hey, Gem, got the oil changed in your car,” Juice announced as he stepped into the office. “You need anything else?”

“Not right now, sweetheart,” She hummed, shuffling paperwork on the desk. “You can go have lunch.”

“Okay,” He nodded, hesitating to leave when he noticed something, or rather someone, suspiciously absent from the office. “Where’s Abel?”

“In the clubhouse with Piney,” Gemma waved her reading glasses toward the building across the lot. “He has a doctor’s appointment coming up this week. You and Stiles taking him or am I?”

“Uh, I don’t know,” He couldn’t be sure if anything would come up between then and now. “Let me talk to Stiles and get back to you.”

“You’re both doing real good with him,” Gemma praised their abilities, how easily they’d fallen into their roles as surrogate fathers. “You make a cute little family.”

“You think?”

“I do.”

“Thanks.”

“You got close, baby,” Gemma said gravely. “So close to never having that.”

“I know,” He’d nearly lost everything, including his life. “I made mistakes.”

“Is that what we’re calling you shooting junk into your arm while your high school piece of pussy rode your dick?”

“Come on, Gem,” He wasn’t looking for a fight or a lecture, he was ready to move on. “It was a rough summer, okay? It was a rough summer for all of us.”

“Yes, it was,” Gemma agreed, but didn’t let him off as easily as he’d hoped. “But a lot of what happened was out of our control. You crawling back into bed with an old girlfriend, that’s on you, baby. You knew that was playing with fire.”

“I never thought she’d show up here,” He and Bex had separated before he’d left Queens and he hadn’t spoken to her in all the years he’d been away. “I don’t even know how or why she tracked me down.”

The club had been reeling from recent losses and Jax and Opie’s departure when Juice’s past had sauntered back into his life with little baggies full of old friends to lift his spirits. Nostalgia had blinded him, sent him right into her arms, into her bed, and they’d spiraled down together, losing themselves in drugs and sex. And as things had gone when he was a teenager, it was an overdose that snapped him back to reality.

“When she showed up, I should have told her to leave,” If he’d been smarter that’s exactly what he would have done as history had taught him how toxic he and Bex could be together, but there was something about having her in Charming that screwed with his better judgment. “She’s gone now, probably for good. I mean, you chased her off while I was in the hospital. I’m glad you did, I’m…I’m not sure I could have.”

“That’s what I’m here for, baby,” The corners of Gemma’s lips twitched. “Don’t make me do it again.”

“I won’t,” He wouldn’t go as far as to promise, he wasn’t in the position to give guarantees about his sobriety, or anything else for that matter. “I don’t want to put anyone through that again. I know how out of control I can get when I’m high or with her, and I hate that. I hate being out of control.”

“You and Stiles keep each other grounded,” Gemma commented, having had a front row seat to their changing relationship. “But if you fall back on old habits again, I will put an end to everything you and Stiles are building. I let one of my boys get involved with a useless junkie once already, and my grandson paid the price for it. I won’t let that happen again. You understand me?”

“Yeah,” Juice swallowed thickly. “I don’t want that to happen either. I don’t want to hurt Stiles or Abel.”

“Then you’d best keep your shit together from here on out.”

“I will.”

* * *

The only thing Stiles wanted to do after school was go home, curl up with Juice, and sleep for like a week, or even just an hour or so. Unfortunately, he had commitments, not only to the garage or his family, but also to his friends and allies in Beacon Hills who couldn’t find their asses with both hands unless Stiles drew them a map.

“Hey, Peter Pan!” Stiles pounded his fist against the steel door as he let himself into the loft. “Your lost boys come flying home yet?”

“No,” Derek grumbled as he stared out the window – probably an hour or so into his afternoon brood session. “And don’t call me that.”

“I think it suits you. As does this cellblock-esque space you call an apartment,” Stiles had only been to the loft a handful of times, but the place was just as drab and unwelcoming as it had been when he helped Derek move in, even the royal purple sofa couldn’t brighten it up. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad you’re not dwelling in the remains of your old house or the abandon subway station anymore, but this place could use a few things.”

“I have a couch, a desk, and a bed,” And Derek’s three pieces of furniture were all conveniently in one room. “What more do I need?”

“I’ll have Gemma make you a list,” He was sure the matriarch would love to get her hands on Derek’s new living space. “Speaking of manipulative, psychotic elders… Where’s creeper wolf?”

“Out with Isaac, looking for Erica and Boyd,” Derek dropped his gaze to the floor. “There’s still no sign of them.”

“I thought they’d be back by now,” Stiles assumed the missing betas would come crawling back to their alpha as soon as they realized how difficult it would be for them to survive without him. “Could they have a new alpha?”

“I would have felt that,” Derek claimed, eyes flashing red. “There would have been a…shift.”

“You think the alpha pack has them,” It made sense, Stiles supposed, one-way to cripple another alpha was to strip him of his pack. “As far as we know, the alpha pack hasn’t made a move against you since they painted their symbol on your door.”

“As far as we know.”

“And we can’t find them” They’d spent the better part of the summer in the preserve, hoping to find some kind of sign that Erica and Boyd were close, or stumble across the alpha pack’s den so they could nip that problem in the bud before it got out of hand. “Maybe they’re not in the woods.”

“They could be in town somewhere, hiding in plain sight,” Derek sighed, scrubbing a hand down his face. “Or they could be long gone by now, thousands of miles away, starting over somewhere new, somewhere safe.”

“It’s a nice thought.”

“I called… I called that pack my dad took Cora to after the fire,” Derek murmured sullenly. “She wasn’t there. My cousin Echo, she said Cora left months ago.”

“That’s good news, Derek,” The way Stiles saw it, it was far better response than Derek had been expecting. “It means as of a few months ago, she was alive and well enough to take a trip, probably one that will lead her here, to you.”

“Then why isn’t she here?” Derek asked, whipping around to face Stiles. “It doesn’t take months to get here from South America. It’s Northern California, not the moon.”

“Maybe she’s scared of the same thing you are, that she’s finally worked up the courage and you won’t be here,” From what Stiles remembered, Cora was the most like Derek, it stood to reason their minds worked similarly. “She’ll get here, you just gotta have—“

“Tell me to have faith and I’ll rip your throat out.”

“I was gonna say ‘ _have patience’_ , but….” Come to think of it, neither patience nor faith were exactly in Stiles repertoire. “Look, just don’t fear the worst yet. She’ll show up when she’s ready.”

“I don’t like shiny, optimistic Stiles,” Derek groused, crossing his arms over his chest. “I prefer dooms day, the sky is falling, and we’re all going to die Stiles.”

“I wasn’t being shiny or optimistic, I was being realistic. I’m a realist now,” It was this new thing he was trying out. “So, if I say the sky is falling and we’re all going to die, it’s because we are.”

“Right.”

“Did you, uh, did you get up to see your dad over the weekend?” Bobby wasn’t an easy subject for Stiles to address, because Bobby was Dean’s people and Stiles wasn’t ready to talk about Dean. “How’s he doing?”

“He’s drinking,” Derek said bluntly. “Still can’t get a hold of Sam.”

“That’s because Sam’s like Jax and Opie, he thinks he’s the only person that’s lost someone,” That wasn’t to say Stiles was unsympathetic to how personal Donna and Dean’s deaths were to the trio, he was just sick of it being used an excuse for them to abandon the family they still had. “They’ll come slinking home when they’re ready or when they get lonely, whichever comes first. We can’t put our lives on hold waiting for them to come home.”

“We haven’t,” Derek pointed out. “We’ve all tried moving on.”

“You think the Argents have moved on from their loss or you think they still want to kill you?” Unless Chris or Allison had gotten a clue over the summer, they still believed the resident alpha was responsible for Victoria Argent’s murder. “’Cause they’re back in town. Allison was at school today.”

“I’m not worried about them.”

“They’re a problem we don’t need,” They already had missing brothers, missing betas, and an alpha pack to contend with, they did not need crazy ass hunters on top of it. “I can send the club to have a chat with them—“

“Aren’t you supposed to be staying away from the club?”

“I don’t care about Clay’s bullshit rules,” He would have been breaking them left and right if he hadn’t been so busy with other things since they’d been implemented. “I’m too tired to take on the Argents, Derek. If I can get the club to settle it for us, it could save us both a lot of unnecessary drama.”

“With your clubs track record, it’s more likely to start something than settle it,” Derek argued with a shocking amount of logic. “We haven’t done anything to the Argents. All they have is what they think they know. If they want to start something based on that, anything we do will be self-defense. If we fire the first shot….”

“I get it. I get it,” They would stand down, wait to see what the Argents planned to do before they did anything at all. “You actually thought this through. I’m very proud.”

“Why are you here?”

“Came to help you look for your pups,” He did feel somewhat responsible for their disappearance; he was the one who let them walk away that night at the Argent house. “But, honestly, after spending an entire summer turning over every stone and finding nothing, if we don’t have some kind of lead to tell us where to go, I don’t know if there’s a point in going out at all hours to search.”

“We keep going out so our scents are anywhere they could be,” Derek grunted, returning his gaze to the window. “So they know we’re still looking.”

“Okay,” Stiles could get behind that reasoning. “So we keep looking.”

* * *

If Sam Winchester was anything, it was predictable. Jax always knew what to expect when they met up or crossed paths on the road. Those first few weeks, he would find Sam in some rent-by-the-hour roadside motel, buried in books and lore on Lilith and the pit, reeking of booze and B.O. More recently, he started to clean himself up, showering and brushing his teeth, kicking the bottle to the curb, thanks in part to a certain demon who had attached herself to his hip in the wake of Dean’s death.

“Ruby,” Jax greeted her with barely concealed disdain, he didn’t know what it was, but there was something about the demon bitch that he just didn’t trust.

“Jax,” The demon sneered as she slipped her jacket over her shoulders. “Sam, I’m gonna go check on that thing we talked about. I’ll be back when your biker boys are gone.”

“Yeah, okay,” Sam tossed a wave over his shoulder, too distracted by the research tacked to the wall to give her a proper goodbye. “Hey guys, I’m glad you’re here. There’s somewhere I need you to go.”

“Another wild goose your girlfriend wants us to chase?” Opie didn’t hold back his feelings regarding the ridiculous tasks they’d been sent out on over the last few months. “Or something real?”

“I wouldn’t ask you to go if I didn’t think it would lead us to Dean,” Sam retorted, jotting down an address on a sheet of paper. “One of my contacts got wind of some demon activity near Pontiac, Illinois. If there is a demon, I need you to bring it back here so I can interrogate it.”

“Interrogate it,” Yeah, Jax had witnessed those interrogations on more than one occasion, and let’s just say he didn’t agree with Sam’s tactics. “What’s the point? They never give you anything.”

“Oh, they give him something,” Opie drawled, scratching his beard. “Just not information.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Sam glowered. “Do you have a problem with trying to save Dean?’

“I wouldn’t be here if I did,” Opie remarked, narrowing his eyes as he stared down his nose at the younger man. “It’s the other errands you send us on, the ones you want us to believe are about Dean that are really about getting you a fix.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Sam snapped, rocketing out of his chair. “ _ **Everything**_ I do is to get Dean back!”

“Getting fucked up on demon blood isn’t going to help us save Dean,” Jax had more than a few issues with Sam’s latest vice, and he made damn sure Sam knew it. “It hasn’t gotten us any closer to him.”

“I’m not some kind of addict,” Sam balked at the insinuation. “The demon blood, it makes me stronger, so when we finally find a way to bring Dean back, I’ll be strong enough to do it.”

“It’s not making you stronger. You’re weaker than you’ve ever been,” He was so consumed with chasing that fix that he couldn’t see clearly. “It’s clouding your judgment.”

“You gotta get yourself straight if we’re gonna have a chance in hell of getting Dean back,” Opie laid out the cold, hard truth for the younger Winchester. “Every goddamn thing you’ve sent us to do has been to feed your addiction, it hasn’t had anything to do with Dean.”

“If you believe that, then what the hell are you doing here?” Sam asked, face twisted in confusion. “Do you guys just come around to see how screwed up I am? I thought you were serious about bringing Dean back!”

“We are,” Jax and Opie were all in when it came to searching for a way to raise Dean from the pits of hell. “You’re the one doing harm to the cause, man. This demon shit, and I don’t just mean chugging demon blood, but tapping Ruby too, that shit’s distracting you.”

“I’m not distracted,” Sam balled his hands into fists at his side, barely containing his anger. “I’m more focused than I’ve ever been.”

“Maybe we should pay Singer a visit,” Opie suggested, giving Sam the cold shoulder. “Maybe he’s got a real lead for us to follow.”

“You want to go? Go!” Sam shouted, chest heaving. “I’ll get Dean back by myself.”

“How do you think Dean’s gonna feel about your demon blood diet?” Jax had a few ideas, although he doubted any of them could touch how pissed Dean would be when he found out about his brother’s extracurricular activities. “I promise you he’s not going to be supportive.”

“As long as he’s alive, I don’t care how he feels about it.”

* * *

The confrontation between John and Gemma had been coming for awhile. They’d taken potshots at each other over the summer, thrown accusations and snarky comments back and forth, neither willing to cede victory to the other. The blowout was edging closer with every passing day, John could feel it in his bones, but his heart knew that it didn’t matter who won when the only person who would lose was the same person losing now, their son.

“Beacon Hills isn’t safe for Stiles,” Gemma repeated, for what had to be the ten-thousandth time in the last four months. “He should live here in Charming fulltime.”

“Donna’s murderer is walking around free and clear— in this very garage I’d bet. Your husband and our son are actively trying to kill each other,” Well, maybe not actively, but they were certainly plotting each other’s demise. “And you want to talk to me about where he would be safest?”

“How many times has your station been attacked this year, Johnny?” Gemma countered, throwing Beacon Hills’ own dangers in his face. “How many times has Stiles been nearly killed because of some werewolf/hunter war?”

“That war is over,” Werewolf and hunter activity had been minimal throughout the summer. “I have my town under control. Can you say the same? ‘Cause the last I checked, the biggest threat in Charming was your husband.”

“Clay’s never hurt Stiles,” Gemma bristled, having the gall to appear offended by the very idea that he would. “Those Argent fucks, they tortured Stiles in your town.”

“And I made sure Chris Argent felt the consequences of those actions,” He didn’t often go outside the law to dole out retaliation, but when it was his son who had been brutalized, and by someone who knew how to work the law in their favor, he’d had no other choice than to take matters into his own hands. “Clay is still a rabid dog off his leash.”

“He’s all bark, very little bite,” Gemma jumped to her husband’s defense… sort of. “Beacon Hills, it’s got werewolves that make a habit of biting teenagers. It has hunters that are willing to burn down entire families just to rid the world of those wolves. How on earth is that a safe environment for Stiles?”

“Let’s cut the bullshit, Gemma. Okay? This has nothing to do with Stiles’ safety. You don’t want Stiles here because Beacon Hills is dangerous, or because you believe Charming is safer,” Charming hadn’t been safe since the club rolled into town to put down roots, anyone who thought differently must have been living in a fantasy world to make themselves feel better about the devil in their backyard. “You want Stiles here to replace Jax, because Jax isn’t here to love and adore you.”

Gemma fed off the love and adoration her eldest son lavished her with. Without Jax to give that to her, she was floundering, second guessing herself, and searching for that love somewhere else, and who better than her youngest son? The problem was, Stiles wouldn’t play Gemma’s game, he loved her, sure, but not with the same overt fierceness as his brother.

“Go to hell.”

“He is living in Jax’s house, raising Jax’s son. He’s covering Jax’s shifts at TM,” His son was spreading himself thin trying to keep up with not only his own responsibilities, but the ones his brother had shirked as well. “He’s picking up enough of Jax’s slack, Gemma. He can’t… He can’t be Jax for you too.”

“That’s not…” Gemma clenched her eyes shut. “The only reason he’s still here instead of in Beacon Hills is because of Abel. He’s not going to leave him until Jax gets home.”

“He can care for Abel in Beacon Hills,” John wouldn’t take issue with a baby in the house if Stiles chose to bring Abel home with him. “You could still have Abel during the day. You can come get him in the morning and Stiles can bring him home after work.”

“No,” Gemma snarled, unwilling to let go of her grandson. “You are not taking that baby out of Charming.”

“Will you think about Stiles wellbeing for once?” Was it really that difficult for her to look past the Jax and Abel of it to give her youngest son any consideration at all? “He needs this.”

“I said no.”

“We’re deluding ourselves by thinking this is our choice,” Their son was as stubborn as the day was long, if he didn’t want to do something, stay in Charming or return to Beacon Hills, he wouldn’t. “We’ll just have to see where Stiles lands with it all.”

* * *

Stiles came in late most nights, shuffling through the door looking bone-weary and battle torn after a long day at school and the garage. For the most part Juice didn’t mind the late night stumble-in, he liked having time to clean up a bit and make dinner without Stiles insisting he didn’t have to do it.

“Hey, smells good in here,” Stiles sniffed the air as he made his way into the kitchen. “Sorry I never made it into work. I meant to be there and home earlier, but I decided to make a pass around town and through the preserve to look for Erica and Boyd.”

“Any luck?” Juice inquired, frowning when Stiles shook his head in response. “You think they’re still out there?”

“I think if they were, they would have found a way to tell us by now,” Stiles murmured, raking a hand through his unruly hair. “Maybe they’re dead. Maybe they’re just out there somewhere living their lives.”

“I know Erica and Boyd left on bad terms with Derek,” The duo had become disillusioned with the whole werewolf thing and blamed their alpha for not being forthcoming about the ups and downs that came with the bite. “But you think they’d at least contact their parents or siblings, let ‘em know they’re okay.”

“Did you contact your family after you ran away from home?”

“No, not at first,” The circumstances surrounding his departure from Queens were vastly different from Erica and Boyd’s retreat from Beacon Hills. “I called when I got settled into Charming.”

“Well, maybe Erica and Boyd haven’t found a place to settle down yet,” Stiles theorized as he dropped heavily into a chair at the kitchen table. “So…how was your day?”

“Spent it doing bitch work for Gemma,” Sam old, same old, pretty much. “You know, I get that she wants to keep an eye on me, but I haven’t done so much busy work since I was a prospect.”

“I can talk to her,” Stiles offered. “She probably won’t listen to me—who am I kidding, she definitely won’t listen to me, but I can plead your case and see what happens.”

“No, no. This thing between us, what we are now, it’s already going to make things weird for me and Jax when he finds out,” The relationship that had developed over the last two months or so was something Juice held dear, but it didn’t come without it’s complications. “If you use your pull with Gem or Jax to help me, it’s just gonna make things worse.”

“Okay. I won’t use my connections to help you,” Stiles promised, going as far as to cross his fingers over his heart. “I really mean that too. Usually I’d say something like that, then go around you and do it anyway, but since it’s you and I know how the club treats you on a good day, I’m gonna keep my mouth shut. I don’t want to make things more difficult for you.”

“Appreciate that,” Juice knew how hard it was for Stiles to sit on his hands when he thought he could help. “Oh, uh, about work today… Lowell told me he overheard Gem and your dad arguing about you in the office.”

“Still fighting about where I should live,” Stiles guessed, shaking his head. “They’re not going to be arguing about that much longer. You were right. I can’t keep going on like I have. I need to go home so I can focus on school.”

“What about Abel?”

“He’ll come with me.”

“You think that’s gonna fly with Gemma?”

“I really don’t care what Gemma thinks about it,” Stiles retorted, resting his chin on the palm of his hand. “What’s she gonna do, report me for kidnapping? There’s no custody agreement. All the court’s gonna see is that Jax abandon his son. They’d throw Abel in the system while they figured out who would be the best guardian for him, and that wouldn’t be me while I’m still underage.”

“He’d get lost in the foster system or given back to Wendy,” Juice had to believe Gemma wouldn’t risk letting either of those things happen. “When do you plan to move back home?”

“After Bobby Elvis gets out,” Stiles wanted a chance to see Elvis, give him a hug, and welcome him back to the free world before he returned to Beacon Hills. “You have any idea how much corruption is running wild in Stahl’s office that they managed to keep him in federal holding for four months without charging him?”

“Oh, I know it,” At church the club had discussed suing the office, just to stick it to Stahl, but legal action wasn’t as satisfying as the possible alternatives. “You gonna tell Gem you’re taking Abel or are you just gonna leave with him?”

“I’ll talk to her about it, tell her how it’s gotta be.”

“Good luck with that,” Juice did not envy the position Stiles was in or the careful line he had toe with Gemma where Abel was concerned. “I, uh, I called your dad so we could have that talk. We’re gonna have lunch at the station tomorrow.”

“Okay,” Stiles scratched the side of his head. “Stupid question, but should I be there?”

“No,” As much as Juice appreciated the support, there were just some things he had to do on his own. “This has gotta be one-on-one, man-to-man, you know?”

“Uh-huh,” Stiles nodded slowly. “It’s just you kind of have this thing with my dad. When he’s in the room, you just can’t…”

“Stop talking? Yeah, I know,” Jax had fondly referred to it as _can’t-shut-the-fuck-up-itis_ on one occasion. “I’m working on that. The last time we were in a room together, I didn’t admit to anything stupid.”

“That’s great,” Stiles grinned proudly. “That’s a great start.”

“I don’t know what it is about your dad that makes me want to confess to every bad thing I’ve ever done,” He’d been searching for a solution to that problem since he’d met Sheriff Stilinski and so far nothing he tried had worked. “It’s like all he’s gotta do is put on this face…”

“The interrogation face, I know it well.”

“It’s like you almost want to confess, because you don’t want to see his look of disappointment.”

“Welcome to my world,” Stiles quipped, slumping down in his chair. “You know, when I go home, you and I are gonna have to start scheduling time to be together or else we’re only gonna see each other at work.”

“We can have dinner together after work, and maybe I could ride up a couple times a week to pick you up for lunch,” They could try all they wanted to carve out time to be together, in the end it all really depended on how calm things stayed with the club and the wolves. “You should make some time for your friends too. I know you haven’t had a chance to see them much this summer.”

“Not true, I see Piney every day at work.”

“You know what I mean,” Socialization was important for growth and mental health, or so some counselor had told Juice in junior high. “I thought you and Scott made peace?”

“We did, but the time I would have spent with him over the summer, play video games or whatever, I’ve spent trying to help Derek find his missing betas,” Stiles acknowledged with a scowl. “Even though he and Allison are broken up, he’s still drinking the Argent Kool-Aid. He might care that two of our classmates are missing, but he’s not going to waste the energy to search for them because his ex’s family wouldn’t like it.”

“Let the Argents have him,” The kid was a fucking tool anyway. “You don’t… You don’t have any other friends at school? No one you shoot the shit with between classes or at lunch? You’re there all day.”

“I had a nice chat with my guidance counselor today,” Stiles mentioned casually. “And Finstock yelled at me for correcting him in class and quitting lacrosse. Does that count?”

“You quit lacrosse?”

“I don’t have the energy for it.”

“Don’t you need extracurricular for college?”

“It looks good on applications, but it’s not mandatory…is it?”

“I don’t know,” Juice had only been accepted into one college in his time, but he hadn’t been the one to fill out the application that earned him admission. “You should probably figure that out.”

“Eh, I’ll do it later,” Stiles brushed off the task. “Hey, are you going to a meeting after dinner?”

“Wasn’t planning on it,” He had been attending N.A. meetings regularly since his overdose, the guys gave him shit for it, but he found it helpful to his recovery. “I like the Wednesday night crowd, I was gonna go then. Why?”

“Maybe we can just chill after dinner,” Stiles suggested, a glimmer of hope in his eyes. “Stretch out on the couch, watch a movie or something. Relax together.”

“We can do that,” Curling up on the couch with Stiles to wind down from the day was something Juice looked forward to every morning when they woke up together. “You know we always end up falling asleep on the sofa when we do that.”

“So we’ll bring blankets and pillows this time.”

“Whatever you say.”

* * *

Jax and Opie had made half a dozen trips to Sioux Falls since they’d left Charming. Four out of six out of those times, they’d found Bobby passed out at his desk, reeking of booze and rank body odor—not unlike Sam. The other two times, he’d been in the drunk tank at the local police station, having caused some sort of ruckus in town. Coming around to find things relatively neat and suspiciously quiet was mildly worrying, to say the least.

“No liquor bottles in the yard,” Opie noted as they parked in the dirt. “Derek must’ve been by recently.”

“Yep,” The wolf tended to pick up after his father when he paid a visit. “You wanna see if Bobby’s Chevelle’s around the side of the house or the back yard?”

“Sure,” Opie dismounted his bike and trekked across the sorry excuse for a lawn toward the opposite end of the property, peeking his head around the side of the house. “No, it’s not here. There are no lights on in the house, either. I don’t think he’s here.”

“I guess we should have called first,” Jax muttered as he took his cellphone from his pocket and powered it on for the first time in days. “I’ll give him a call, see if he’s nearby or on a hunt some— _Jesus_.”

“What is it?”

“I have seven missed calls from a number in Indiana,” Jax didn’t fucking know anybody in Indiana, it’s where Dean was buried, yeah, but it’s not like the dead could get up and make phone calls. “Who the fuck would be calling me from Indiana?”

“How the hell should I know?” Opie huffed. “They leave a voicemail?”

“Stiles has had my voicemail box full since the day after we left,” His brother’s messages had started as sweet words of compassion and understanding that over time morphed into angry pleas to come home. “That’s why Gem leaves messages for me on your phone.”

“Hey, I get my fair share of messages from baby brother,” Opie grunted, lumbering back to his bike. “Gem’s last voicemail said the feds were releasing Bobby Elvis in a day or so. She wants us to be there to welcome him home.”

“Yeah, I know,” His mother hadn’t wanted them to leave in the first place, it wasn’t a surprise that she’d want them home and would use any excuse to get them there. “What do you think? Are you ready to go back?”

“I don’t know if I’ll ever be ready to go back,” Opie murmured, gazing up at the night sky. “It’s never gonna be home again, Jax, not without Donna.”

“You don’t know that,” Things would never be the same, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t find some semblance of normalcy in Charming. “Kenny and Ellie need their dad to come home eventually.”

“Could say the same about you with Abel.”

“You know, I hated Abel when Wendy was pregnant with him. I was so pissed at her that I hated him for existing inside of her,” Reflecting on that time, he couldn’t fathom how he could be so cruel to his son before he even had a chance to come into the world. “Then when he was born, he was so sick, the only thing I wanted was for him to be okay. I-I didn’t want to lose him. And now… I know it should hurt to be away from him, but I…”

“The first time I held Kenny and Ellie, I couldn’t believe I could love something so much. I couldn’t imagine being away from them. When I was inside, all I wanted was to be home with them and Donna,” Opie recalled, old familiar pain settling on his shoulders. “When I finally got home, I just couldn’t connect with them. It’d been too long, they didn’t know me. I don’t want that for you and Abel.”

“You think we should go home?”

“You should, for Abel.”

“I’m not going without you.”

* * *

The place looked good, all things considered. The lawn was freshly mowed and the hedges were trimmed, there weren’t newspapers or cigarette butts littering the front steps or any eviction notices taped to the door, it was all disgustingly normal. That wasn’t to say he wanted to come back to complete destruction or disarray, but some sort of disruption would’ve been nice, some sign that his loss had effected Jax in a visceral way— Jax had a destructive personality, he would have taken his grief out on anything within arm’s reach.

Then again, maybe he was reading too much into the physical state of things, after all, it’s not like Jax’s bike was even in the driveway, who knows when he was there last. Stiles’ Jeep was parked under the overhang, unsurprisingly, nestled in beside Juice’s motorcycle, that in itself explained the upkeep of the property. Stiles had been cleaning up Jax’s messes since he could walk and Juice was a serious neat-freak. Of course, it was just as likely that he was focused on the state of the house to avoid going inside and facing the family he’d left behind.

“We ain’t gettin’ any younger,” Bobby drawled, pressing a firm hand to his shoulder and giving him a good shove. “Rip the Band-Aid off, son.”

“Yeah,” He gulped; eyeing the house like it was another stage of hell, a trick Alistair had cooked up to screw with his mind. “Okay.”

He took a deep breath to steel himself as he made his way up the steps to the front of the house. He hesitated to knock, wondering if it was too late or too early for a drop-in, the best gauge he had for a time was that it was dark outside and the moon was inching toward the horizon.

“For the love of…” Bobby elbowed him out of the way, pounding his palm against the door. “Christ, boy.”

“I was gonna do it,” Give him a break, it’d been forty goddamn years, he was allowed to be a little nervous. “I just needed a minute.”

“Uh huh.”

It was a long few moments filled with muffled cries and a string of curse words before the door flew open. For the first time in four decades, he came face-to-face with Abel, just as adorable as he remembered, suckling on a bottle and resting comfortably on the hip of his disheveled, exhausted uncle.

“I’m sorry,” Stiles apologized, tightening his hold on his nephew. “We’re not accepting visitors of the undead or skinwalker varieties today. Try us again tomorrow.”

“That’s funny,” He couldn’t help but crack a grin, he’d missed the kid’s sarcasm. “I’m not undead – I mean, I am, I guess. I was dead and now I’m not, but I’m not a zombie or anything. Or a skinwalker.”

“It’s him, Stiles. It’s Dean,” Bobby interjected, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with him on the front steps. “Trust me. I tested him myself.”

“Trust you? I haven’t seen you in four months,” Stiles spit at the older man, contempt dripping from his tone. “So, no, I’m not gonna trust you or any of the other runaways.”

“Test me yourself,” Dean stepped up to the plate, prepared to swallow another shot of holy water. “You can see for yourself that I’m me.”

“You want me to test you?” Stiles lips twisted up in sinister smile as he considered the proposal. “Okay, I’ll test you.”

“All right. Cool. Go get your hol—“ Dean’s request died on his lips as Stiles flicked the nipple of Abel’s bottle in his face. “Is that… Was that baby formula? Did you just spritz me in the face with baby formula?”

“Juice!” Stiles shouted over his shoulder into the house. “I need the holy water!”


	2. Lazarus Rising

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Unbeta'd.  
> Warnings: Implied rape/non-con  
> Gif sets: [Go](https://stilinski-ortiz-dolan.tumblr.com/post/620933330588794880/charming-wayward-sons-fic-scene-go-bad-moon), [Smelling](https://stilinski-ortiz-dolan.tumblr.com/post/621914805104705536/charming-wayward-sons-fic-scene-smelling-bad-moon)
> 
> Set durings: SOA 2x01 Albification, SPN 4x01 Lazarus Rising, TW 3x01 Tattoo
> 
> **There shouldn't be this long of a gap between chapters again.

It was funny, Jax thought, how he and Opie had traveled so many miles and covered so much ground over the summer, they’d almost forgotten how close home was. It was a strange sort of feeling to speed passed the ‘Entering Charming’ sign after so long away. Whether it was a good kind of strange or not remained to be seen.

Charming hadn’t changed much if at all in the time they’d been away, but the same couldn’t be said for Jax’s house. The exterior was…clean, the lawn freshly mowed, the garbage bin wasn’t at the curb, shit, it even looked like someone had power-washed the whole front of the house. The place looked like it belonged to someone who actually gave a shit about keeping up appearances, that was until you looked at the packed driveway.

“Stiles and Singer are here, and I think that’s Juice’s bike,” Opie noted as they dismounted their bikes. “Who do you think the soccer-mom SUV belongs to?”

“No idea,” Jax supposed it could belong to Gemma, but she leaned more toward Cadillacs than Toyotas. “Guess we’ll find out.”

No one rushed out to greet ‘em or welcome them home, that was fine, it’s not like anyone knew they were coming home anyway. Jax’s key still worked on the deadbolt on the front door, he’d take that as a win.

“That’s a good sign,” Opie nodded as Jax pushed the front door open. “Gem and Stiles must not be that pissed at you.”

The vehicles outside gave Stiles, Bobby, and Juice away, and Jax wasn’t surprised to find Derek amongst them when he and Ope stepped through the door. The one person he wasn’t expecting to see was the one he never thought he’d seen again.

“Dean…” Jax sighed, relief, shock, and confusion washing over him. “Took you long enough.”

“You try crawling out of your own grave,” Dean challenged him, a smile tugging at his lips. “See how long it takes you.”

“Wouldn’t take me four goddamn months,” Jax snarked as the guilt he’d been carrying suddenly lifted off his shoulders. “Must’ve been a long climb from the pit.”

“Yeah, it wasn’t really like that,” Dean grunted, shoving his hands into his pockets. “I don’t, uh, I don’t know how I’m back. I just woke up in a pine box and…”

“Which doesn’t make a lot of sense in itself,” Stiles interjected, reminding Jax that there were other people in the room. “From what Derek said, the hellhounds ripped you to shreds when they made you their chew toy.”

“Hey!” Jax snapped at his little brother. “Some tact would be nice.”

“No, he’s right,” Dean acknowledged. “I should have looked like a Thriller video reject.”

“But you don’t,” Bobby leveled his adoptive son with a sharp look of suspicion. “What do you remember?”

“Not much. I was puppy chow for the hellhounds and then… lights out. I came to six feet under, that was it,” Dean explained the circumstances of his brutal death and impromptu resurrection. “I tried to call Sam, his number’s not working. He’s not, uh…he’s not…”

“He’s alive,” Opie assured him. “Jax and me were just with him yesterday.”

“I tried calling you too,” Dean mentioned to Jax. “I kept getting sent to voicemail, and your voicemail was full.”

“You couldn’t get through?” Stiles quirked a brow, lips twisted in an ugly sneer. “So if it wasn’t his precious Dean, what did bring his highness Jax home?”

“I wanted to see my kid.”

“If that were true, you would have asked about him already instead of gawking at the recently returned from the dead,” Stiles countered, voice dripping with contempt. “Let’s face it, Dean coming back from the dead isn’t that shocking, it isn’t even that interesting. It’s not exactly the first time we’ve seen a Winchester do it, is it?”

“Why were you buried, Dean?” Juice cut off the brewing argument between Stiles and Jax. “Shouldn’t you have been salted and burned in some ritualistic funeral pyre?”

“That was gonna be my next question, actually,” Dean set his gaze on the two men who were at least partially responsible for how his remains were dealt with, Bobby and Derek. “What gives? Why’d you bury me in the middle of nowhere?”

“Sam wouldn’t let us burn you,” Derek replied as he leaned against the living room wall, arms crossed over his chest. “He said you’d need your body when he found a way to bring you back.”

“That’s all he’s been able to focus on since you died. He’s tried everything to bring you back,” Jax would keep the specifics of that under-wraps until Dean had a chance to regain his bearings in the land of the living. “It killed him that he couldn’t find a way to bring you home, that nothing he did worked...”

“Oh, he got me home. Obviously,” Dean gestured to himself. “But whatever he did, it’s bad mojo.”

“Is that a technical term?” Opie quipped. “I don’t think you’re wrong, but why are you so sure what he did involved evil?”

“The gravesite. It was like a nuke went off,” Dean swallowed thickly. “And then there was this force, this presence, I don’t know, but it…it blew past me at a fill-up joint. And then…then…”

Dean stripped off his jacket and pulled up the sleeve of his t-shirt to show the handprint-shaped burn on his right arm.

“It was like a demon just yanked me out…or rode me out,” Dean shivered, rolling his sleeve down and hiding the burn from sight once more. “Maybe to hold up their end of the bargain for whatever deal Sam made.”

“I’m not saying he didn’t try to make a deal at some point,” Hell, even Jax had tried to make a deal in those first few days when the loss was still fresh. “But I don’t think he’s made one recently. Every run he’s sent me and Ope on has been a demon hunt, but not a let’s-make-a-deal kind of demon.”

“Well, he sure as hell did something,” Dean snapped, slipping his jacket back over his shoulders. “Where was he when you saw him last?”

“I can show you,” Jax volunteered, if only because he wasn’t ready to let Dean out of his sight now that he finally had him back. “I’ll take you to him.”

“Of course you will,” Stiles seethed, jaw clenched. “Part of me wants to tell you if you leave again, to stay gone.”

“What is your problem?” Jax had been home all of five fucking minutes, nowhere near long enough to piss his brother off. “Why are you being a dick?”

“Really?” Juice snorted derisively. “’Stupid’ is the play you’re going with here, Jax?”

“You want to leave again, Jax? Go. I don’t care,” Stiles threw his hands in air. “I’ll see you in another four months if death-bait here doesn’t get you killed first.”

“Hey!” Dean exclaimed indignantly. “Why are you picking on me?”

“Jesus Christ, Stiles. I won’t be gone for months,” Jax shook his head. “It’s only for a couple of days.”

“You want to go again, then go!” Stiles shouted at his brother. “But don’t expect anyone – including Abel – to be here when you finally decide to drag yourself home.”

Stiles let the threat hang in the air as he whipped around and stalked off down the hall in the direction of the nursery.

“Look, Jax,” Juice pointedly stepped between Jax and the hallway, as if he thought Jax might follow his little brother. “I don’t know what you did all summer, but I know what he did. A lot of that was raising your son, taking your and Opie’s shifts at TM, and taking care of me. None of that should have been his responsibility, but he did it.”

“And I appreciate that,” Jax would express said appreciation after he had a chance to set his bags down and properly welcome Dean home. “If there’s a point you’re trying to make Juice…”

“He’s saying you should probably stay here and work things out with Stiles,” Derek dumbed it down for him. “I’ll go with Dean and my dad to find Sam.”

“He’s right,” Opie took Derek’s side on things. “Gotta make things right with little brother before he makes your life a living hell.”

“Right.”

* * *

Gemma never thought she would reach a point where her life would be reduced to a schedule. Sure, she did the nine-to-five thing at TM, if she wasn’t there to keep things running smoothly, it would fall to ruin, but even on the busiest day, she could still come and go as she pleased. Lately, though, she didn’t have the same luxury of doing what she wanted when she wanted.

Most days, Gemma had to be at Jax’s house at the crack of dawn to pick up Abel so Stiles could leave for school on time, and she kept the baby until Juice and Stiles finished their shifts at the garage. Other days, when Stiles had something to do before school, he would drop off the baby with her at TM himself. This morning was a little different, he didn’t call her to let him know he’d be doing the drop-off, and he was pissed off, angry and curt, not his normal energetic, sarcastic self.

“What’s wrong with you?” She asked her youngest as she lifted her grandson out of the car seat. “You and Juice get into it this morning or something?”

“No,” Stiles grunted, passing the diaper bag to her. “There’s a fresh bottle and baby food in the bag. I’ll come get him after school.”

“You got a shift this afternoon,” Gemma reminded him, hitching the diaper bag over her shoulder. “Unless you plan to no-show again.”

“Have one of your other boys take my shift if you can convince them to stick around longer than an hour,” Stiles grumbled, climbing back into the Jeep. “Pretty sure they’re not far behind me.”

As it turned out, her son wasn’t wrong. As soon as the Jeep had exited the lot, a trio of motorcycles along with Derek’s SUV, and Singer’s beater pulled in. Gemma darted for Jax and Opie before they’d even fully parked, stopping short when she caught sight of a ghost emerging from Singer’s Chevelle.

“Holy shit…” Her breath caught in her throat. “Dean?”

“Hey, Ma,” Dean grinned as he made his way over. “You miss me?”

“You asshole,” She balanced Abel on her hip and wrapped her arm around him, pulling him into a hug. “How long have you been back?”

“My heart started beating sometime yesterday. I got into town early this morning,” Dean revealed, reaching out to caress his fingers through Abel’s baby-fine hair. “Didn’t get to see him much at the house. Stiles put him back to bed so quickly when I showed up…”

“Probably thought you were a demon or something,” Gemma theorized, taking a cautious step back. “You’re not, are you?”

“Little late to be asking me that.”

“That’s not a ‘no’.”

“No, I’m not a demon or anything.”

“Good,” Gemma relaxed. “You all right, you know, with the whole raising from the dead thing?”

“It’s an adjustment,” Dean admitted, ducking his head. “But I’m okay.”

“If you say so.”

“I can’t stay long. Bobby, Derek, and me are gonna go get Sam. Drag his ass home,” Dean said, clearing his throat. “Just wanted to stop by and see you first.”

“If you hadn’t, I would have kicked your ass,” As it was, she was already planning to kick her oldest son’s ass. “Jax isn’t going with you?”

“He wanted to,” Dean glanced over at the man in question, tracking him from the parking lot to the clubhouse. “Stiles gave him a hard time about it.”

“Stiles will cool off,” It might take a few weeks, or more likely months, the kid knew how to hold a grudge, but eventually he’d let Jax off the hook. “It was right for him to guilt Jax into staying. It’s been four months. Jax needs to be home, with his son.”

“I know.”

“So do you.”

“I just gotta go get Sam. I’ll be home before you know it,” Dean insisted, offering her a reassuring smile. “Promise.”

“You better me.”

* * *

If Jax and Opie had been following Nomad rules while they were away, every couple of weeks, they would have joined another charter for church to keep up-to-date on things. While they did stop by other charters to check in, neither of them had been in the right mindset to deal with club business of any kind. If they had done things as they were supposed to, they would have had an idea of what had been going on when they sat down at the redwood table instead of playing catch-up.

“We made a new deal with the Irish,” Chibs mentioned once the greetings were out of the way. “They’re gonna get us the Russian guns we need to keep our Oakland business intact, and we’re gonna use their facility to store and assemble.”

“It’s too dangerous to use our warehouse for storage while the ATF is still sniffing around,” Juice added. “Doesn’t matter what dummy corp we use or how far off the grid we are. If the ATF puts a tail on anyone of us, we’d be leading them right to the warehouse.”

“We’re gonna run the Irish’s hardware up the coast for 28% and the Russian stock,” Chibs continued. “Temporary fix till the heat wears off.”

“We already voted on it,” Tig jumped in. “It passed.”

“Okay,” Jax didn’t have an issue with the deal, it’s wasn’t like they had many options with the feds still riding their asses. “Anything else?”

“Your brother tried to burn down the clubhouse. You are I are going to talk about that later,” Clay scowled at Jax before casting a far more compassionate gaze Opie’s way. “Ope, I haven’t been able to say this yet on a club level. We’re all broken up about what happened to Donna. Now we gotta deal with the underbelly of this. Those bullets that killed her… they were meant for you. We gotta settle that.”

“Had to be the Niners,” Opie decided off what little information he had. “Local PD said it was a gangsta SUV, right? Black guy driving?”

“No one saw who was driving, Opie, no one,” Tig asserted with the confidence of someone who knew exactly who emptied that clip into Donna’s skull. “We’re pretty sure the guy was not black.”

“He was brown,” Clay declared, although Jax was certain he had zero evidence to back it up. “Mayans.”

“You lot talked to Laroy not long after Donna,” Chibs waved a hand between Jax and Piney. “So we know it wasn’t the Niners.”

“That’s right,” Piney confirmed. “As far as Laroy is concerned, the Niners and Sons are good.”

“And you believed him?” Opie’s eyes flickered from Jax to his father and back again. “Both of you?”

“Yeah, we did,” It was easy for Jax when he knew for a fact Clay was the one behind the hit that had taken Donna’s life. “I know the truth when I hear it.”

“It’s got to be Alvarez. He thinks we set him up,” Tig added fuel to the Mayan fire by way of motive. “We took his money, then we left him behind to get shredded by the Niners.”

“I had Trammel look into it. Black Range Rover got jacked outside a bar in Alameda that same night,” Clay offered up more falsified evidence to lend credence to their carefully concocted story. “It turned up two days later, a few miles down the road from the Mayan clubhouse in Hayward. Mac-10 casings on the floor – same kind of gun that killed Donna.”

“There were prints on the dash,” Tig continued to lay it on thick, as if more manufactured evidence would make his lie all the more believable. “Before the end of the day, we’re gonna know who was driving.”

“It’s been four months and we’re only now getting the prints back?” Jax couldn’t help but poke a hole in the story. “I knew the crime lab was backed up, but that shit is ridiculous.”

“I convinced Trammel to let us handle the arrest,” Clay carried on undeterred. “Opie, I thought you’d want to be the one to take care of him. You can take Tig and Chibs to back you.”

“And me,” No way was Jax leaving Opie alone with the guy who killed his wife and another one who was in the dar. “I loved Donna too. I want in on this.”

“Yeah,” Opie agreed. “I want Jax.”

“All right,” Clay chose to save face by not kicking up a fuss on that matter. “Fine.”

With business seemingly finished for the afternoon, the club began to file out of the chapel and out to the bar. Soon, it was just Jax and Clay left at the table.

“Looks like Trammel earned his pay,” Jax muttered, lighting up a cigarette. “Even if it is four months overdue.”

“You got something you need to say?” Clay asked, rising from his chair to shut the chapel doors, cutting them off from the rest of the club. “Say it, son.”

“We both know this is bullshit,” Jax had known Clay was responsible for Donna’s death since the moment he’d seen her body laid out on the road. “The only reason I don’t set fire to it is ‘cause I love Opie, and the truth would kill him.”

“We all love Ope,” Clay had the audacity to claim. “He needs this, and we’re gonna give it to him.”

“Whoever you put this murder on, just make sure they deserve to die,” Too many innocents had already been lost to the war his stepfather had cooked up in his mind. “’Cause the guy that killed Donna is out there sharing a beer with her husband.”

“You’d better be careful how you navigate this one.”

“Or what, you gonna put a bullet in the back of my head, too?”

“Your little brother is already towing a dangerous line, thinking he knows more about this than he does, making threats,” Clay snarled. “The only reason I haven’t put him in the ground where he belongs is because of your mother, but now that you’re back, she doesn’t need him anymore.”

“So, what, you want me to keep him in line?” Jax couldn’t resist the urge to roll his eyes. “Him trying to burn down the clubhouse has you that spooked, huh?”

“He threatened me. He threatened this club,” Clay slammed his fist down on the black, charred reaper carved into the table. “If he were anyone else, he’d be dead right now.”

“Gemma would kill you herself if you laid a finger on him,” Which, Jax suspected, was exactly why Stiles was still breathing. “That’s not gonna change just because I’m home.”

“He doesn’t step into this clubhouse again,” Clay set his terms. “Since you and Opie are home now, he doesn’t need to be picking up your shifts at the garage anymore, so there’s no reason for him to be there, ever.”

“That garage is half mine,” His mother had signed his dad’s half over to him when he turned eighteen. “You don’t get to decide on your own who works there. Gemma and I say he stays, he stays.”

“You keep him out of my goddamn clubhouse,” Clay growled, not budging on that particular rule. “And get him off Juice’s dick before he poisons him against us.”

“I didn’t know he was on Juice’s dick.”

“I’m sure there’s a lot you don’t know about what he got up to this summer.”

* * *

The sudden reappearance of Stiles’ brothers should have been a cause for celebration, but it only served to irritate him. Derek deciding to run off and play Find-a-Winchester, leaving Stiles to deal with pack bullshit, did nothing to improve his mood. Oh, and that phone call from his dad about Isaac being admitted to the hospital following a late night attack, that was just icing on the freaking cake.

However, unlike Derek, whose leadership skills were abysmal at best, Stiles actually knew a thing or two about being the boss; he’d been bossing around the club since he could speak. The key to good leadership was knowing when to delegate duties, and that was where creeper-wolf came in.

“No.”

“’ _No_ ’ is not an acceptable answer,” Stiles would also disregard any variation of ‘ _I’ll think about it’_. “Look, Peter, Derek’s out of town, and I’ve got school, a job, and a baby. It’s time for you to step up.”

“I would. I really would, but I don’t want to,” Peter hummed, bored and disinterested. “I don’t even like Isaac.”

“No one likes Isaac,” His shitty childhood didn’t excuse his lack of a personality. “But he is a member of your pack. You have a responsibility to him.”

“I don’t,” Peter shook his head. “He was Derek’s pet project not mine, and certainly not my pack.”

“Oh, please,” Stiles scoffed. “You’re part of Derek’s pack whether either of you cop to it or not. That means Isaac is part of your pack.”

“What would you like me to do with him?”

“Get him out of the hospital before the doctors notice his miraculous healing capabilities and start doing questionable science experiments on him,” Stiles probably wouldn’t care if he thought Isaac could keep his mouth shut, but he was willing to bet the kid would crack and sell them out with very little prodding. “I’d rather us all not end up at some sketchy government facility getting tested and probed.”

“We’re werewolves not aliens,” Peter deadpanned. “And you’re human. Although I wouldn’t be surprised if one day you ended up locked in some cell at Area 51.”

“Go get Isaac and take him somewhere safe. Make sure he doesn’t die before Derek gets back,” All they had to do was keep the beta alive until Derek returned, and then he’d be his alpha’s problem once more. “And get him to tell you what happened last night so we know if we’re up against the alpha pack or hunters.”

“What if he doesn’t want to talk to me?” Peter questioned curiously. “After all, he doesn’t trust me.”

“I’m sure you can be very convincing when you want to be,” Stiles didn’t care how Peter go the information so long as he got it. “Just get it done, creeper.”

“You are very pushy today.”

“I’m pushy every day,” It was one of his more redeemable qualities. “I have to get to school. My phones on if you need me.”

“I’ll try not to need you.”

“You just became my favorite werewolf.”

* * *

Tracking Sam down was the easy part, he hadn’t strayed far from where Jax and Opie had last seen him. There did seem to be some confusion on both sides of the field when they showed up to Sam’s motel unannounced and strange, scantily clad woman answered the door. She thought it took three men to deliver a pizza and they assumed she was a working girl. It all sorted itself out once Sam came to the door and the unnamed woman had been unceremoniously sent on her way.

“What’d it cost to bring me back? Was it just your soul, or was it something worse?” Dean wasted no time interrogating his little brother. “Now I’m off the hook and you’re on it, is that it? You’re some demon’s bitch-boy?”

“He is,” Derek noted, sniffing the air. “Just not in the way you think.”

“Don’t listen to him, Dean,” Sam shot Derek a sharp look that suggested he shut up or else. “He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

“I know what I’m smelling,” Derek grimaced, scrunching his nose as his eyes flickered toward the bed. “Demon and pheromones and—“

“You think I made a deal, Dean?” Sam swiftly changed the subject before Derek could finish his sentence. “I didn’t. I tried everything! That’s the truth! I tried opening the Devil’s Gate. Hell, I tried to bargain, but no demon would deal, all right? You were rotting in Hell for months, and I couldn’t stop it. So I’m sorry it wasn’t me, all right? Dean, I’m sorry.”

“Okay. It’s okay, Sammy,” Dean sagged his shoulders, choosing to take his brother for his word, and steadfastly ignoring whatever the hell Derek’s nose was picking up. “You don’t have to apologize. I believe you.”

“Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad Sam’s soul remains intact, but it does raise a sticky question,” Bobby mentioned, brows furrowed. “If he didn’t pull you out, Dean, then what did?”

“That’s the million dollar question, isn’t it?” Dean sighed, collapsing heavily onto the sofa. “Wait a minute. Sam, if you weren’t digging me out of my grave, then what the hell were you doing around here?”

“Hunting down Lilith,” Sam said, the ‘duh’ left unsaid but heard loud and clear all the same. “Trying to get some payback.”

“All by yourself?” Bobby tutted, a disapproving, accusatory lit to his tone. “Who do you think you are, your old man?”

“It’s not like you’ve been in the condition to help anybody,” Derek took a swipe at his father. “And he wasn’t alone. He had Jax and Opie doing his bidding.”

“I’ve been pretty messed up,” Sam confessed, ducking his head in shame. “Anyways, uh, I was checking out these demons from Tennessee, when out of nowhere they took a hard left, booked it up here yesterday morning.”

“When I busted out,” Dean murmured, wondering if the two events were related or if it was a mere coincidence. “Some badass demon drags me out and now this? It’s gotta be connected somehow, right?”

“No demon’s letting you loose out of the goodness of their hearts. They’ve gotta have something nasty planned,” Bobby remarked, considering the circumstances carefully. “How you feeling? Anything strange or different?”

“I feel fine,” With the exception of seeing flashes of blood-red hell every time he closed his eyes, Dean was peachy-fucking-keen. “A little hungry.”

“Sounds normal to me,” Derek huffed. “Why are we so sure it was a demon responsible? A demon didn’t bring Peter back.”

“No, that was your life force and whatever the hell that Lydia girl is,” Dean noted, pursing his lips. “We know what she is yet?”

“We’re leaning toward banshee,” Derek mentioned, partially distracted by his vibrating cellphone. “Why would a demon bring you back? You’re the enemy, a direct threat to their existence. Wouldn’t it make more sense for them to keep you under their thumb in hell? Bringing you back seems counter-intuitive.”

“That’s a very astute Stiles-like observation there, wolf-boy,” Dean narrowed his eyes at the alpha. “Oh, my god. Is he texting you things to say?”

“It’s a valid point,” Derek muttered, shoving his phone back in his pocket. “There’s no reason for a demon to risk bringing you back. It doesn’t make any sense.”

“We got a pile of questions and no shovel,” Sam acknowledged. “We need help.”

“I know a psychic a few hours from here,” Bobby revealed. “Something this big, maybe she’s heard the other side talking.”

“Hell yeah, it’s worth a shot.”

* * *

As a rule, Peter didn’t take orders from anyone, let alone a teenager, but seeing as Stiles was one trauma away from snapping and killing every poor soul in his line of sight, Peter thought it was best to make an exception just this once. He’d sooner rip out his claws one-by-one then call himself obedient, but he did as was requested of him by making his way to Beacon Hills Memorial to check on Isaac in a somewhat timely fashion. He arrived in the nick of time, he determined, catching the scent of unfamiliar, powerful wolves permeating through the otherwise sterile-smelling hospital corridors, and mingling with the much weaker scents of betas McCall and Lahey.

“Fantastic.”

Peter ignored the receptions desk and followed the combined scents up a few flights of stairs to the surgical floor of the hospital. Naturally, by the time he got there, Scott had already made a mess of things, getting his ass handed to him by an alpha dressed in a set of scrubs. Isaac was unconscious in a wheelchair parked near the bank of elevators, Peter was tempted to grab him and go, leave Scott to fend for himself, and probably would have to if not for the whining he would have to endure from the beta’s so-called friends if and when they found out.

So, Peter stuck to the plan, punching the button on the elevator and rolling the wheelchair-bound Isaac in as soon as the doors were open. He didn’t bother trying to go toe-to-toe with the alpha, it wasn’t a fight he would win on his own. Instead, after a particularly violent toss that sent Scott careening into a wall, Peter snatched the young beta by the scruff of his neck and dragged him into the relative safety of the elevator.

“Aren’t you supposed to be in school?” Peter asked the teenager as the elevator doors closed, the alpha disappearing behind them. “Or is Beacon Hills High offering extra credit for skipping school to get your ass kicked?”

“There was another one—another alpha,” Scott panted, scrambling to his feet. “In the elevator when I came up. He was blind, I think. He had a walking cane and wore sunglasses.”

“Deucalion,” Peter had a vague recollection of the wolf, while he’d never met him personally, he’d heard stories from his sister. “Did he say anything to you?”

“No,” Scott shook his head. “He asked me to press the button to the second floor, then asked if I would help him with something else.”

“What else?”

“I don’t know,” Scott gulped. “The doors opened and I saw that other alpha had Isaac. I had to help him.”

“Of course,” Peter wouldn’t call getting tossed around like a ragdoll helping, but that was just him. “You’re nowhere near strong enough to take on an alpha of that stature, Scott.”

“I wouldn’t have had to if Derek had been around,” Scott bristled. “Where is he?”

“Helping his father and Dean track down Sam,” The how’s and why’s weren’t something Peter was privy to. “He should be back in a few days.”

“Helping Dean?” Scott’s eyes widened. “Dean’s dead.”

“Oh, he broke out of his coffin sometime yesterday,” One more thing Peter hadn’t been given details on. “He was in Charming long enough to rile Stiles up, then he was off again, with Derek and Bobby in tow.”

“Why would Stiles be riled up about Dean being back?”

“Dean made a deal that resulted in his death, it was something he chose out of his own free will,” It was a decision made under duress, sure, but Dean was fully aware of what he was doing and the consequences of the deal he had made. “Whereas Stiles sister Donna was brutally murdered, stolen from her family without warning. I suspect Stiles believes if anyone deserves to be brought back, it would be her, as she didn’t choose to die.”

“I guess that makes sense,” Scott mumbled, fiddling with the cuffs of his hoodie. “Not really, Dean’s fault, though, is it?”

“When you’re dealing with loss, rationality is rarely a factor.”

* * *

The point of pinning Donna’s murder on a Mayan was to avoid starting something with a crew they were on moderately good terms with. The fact that it would also throw suspicion off anyone inside the club was a bonus. It was a good plan when working under the assumption that vengeance would be taken quietly, so not to instigate a full on war.

Unfortunately, once they had the guy, and Tig had gone ahead and shot his tongue out of his mouth, Opie had decided to take things in a different direction. Jax could only stand by and watch as his best friend put a trio of bullets into the man, then carved the anarchy symbol into his chest.

“That’s so Alvarez knows who,” Opie declared, swiping the blood-soaked knife over his pant leg. “And why.”

“Jesus Christ,” Jax swallowed thickly. “You guys get rid of the guns and head back. I’ll dump the body.”

“You’re dropping him on Mayan turf,” Chibs reminded him. “You can’t do it on your own, Jackie boy.”

“You guys need to be at the clubhouse when the feds drop off Bobby,” It would look awfully suspicious if they were all noticeably absent when they were supposed to be welcoming their brother home. “I got this. Go.”

Despite the initial protest, it didn’t take much to get Opie, Chibs, and Tig on their bikes and on their way, leaving Jax with the van and a fresh corpse in an alley in broad fucking daylight.

“Shit.”

The first thing he had to do was get rid of any evidence the hit was Sons related, a simple enough task if you didn’t mind slicing a guy’s chest to ribbons. The second thing involved lugging the body into the van for transport, not an easy feat on his own, but Jax managed it just fine. From then on, it should have been smooth sailing into Mayan territory to dump the body, barring any unnecessary distractions, like, oh say, Jax’s cellphone ringing.

“What?”

“ _Jackson. It’s nice of you to finally answer your phone.”_

“John,” Jax supposed he couldn’t fault his little brother’s father from being short with him, he had been more or less radio silent for the better part of four months. “Been a minute.”

“ _I heard you were back in town. Thought we should talk about what happens now.”_

“I, uh, I’m not sure what you mean,” Now Jax planned to get his life back on track, but somehow he didn’t think that’s what Stilinski meant. “What happens now with what?”

“ _What happens with Abel and Stiles? My son has been taking care of your son, that’s what I mean, Jackson.”_

“Stop calling me Jackson,” He hated hearing his name in that scolding tone only a father could muster. “Hey, you’re the one who gave me permission to go. You were okay with me checking out for a while after Dean... So was Stiles.”

“ _For a few weeks, not a few months.”_

“I don’t remember anyone putting a time table on it,” All he recalled from that conversation was the overwhelming need to get the hell out of Charming. “Look, man, I appreciate everything Stiles has done for Abel while I was away. I can see how it might’ve been difficult for him.”

“ _You can see that, can you? You can see how it_ _ **might have**_ _been difficult?”_

“I _**know**_ it’s been difficult for him,” He had a sinking feeling his baby brother was going to let him know just how difficult in a very snarky manner sometime soon. “But I’m home now. I can take over from here. Abel’s my son—“

“ _Stiles is not just going to let you take Abel from him.”_

“Abel is my son,” His brother didn’t get a say in the matter. “Who takes care of him is my decision, and since I’m back, that’ll be me.”

“ _This is exactly why I think we should talk.”_

“We’re talking now.”

“ _This conversation needs to be done in person. I can’t do it today, I already have lunch with Juice.”_

“I’m busy today anyway,” He had a dead body in the back that needed dealing with and Bobby Elvis’s party to get to a little later. “Why are you having lunch with Juice?”

“ _The sooner we have this talk the better. I can try to come down sometime tomorrow.”_

“Okay,” Jax didn’t have any immediate plans for the next day, he could probably pencil Stilinski in somewhere. “Why are you having lunch with Juice?”

“ _That’s something you should talk to Juice or your brother about.”_

“Well, they were both being dicks this morning,” Jax wasn’t really in the mood to talk to either of them, especially after that weird comment Clay made about the duo. “Why don’t you just save us all some time and tell me yourself.”

“ _I’ll see you tomorrow, Jackson.”_

“You’re seriously not going to tell me?”

“ _Goodbye, Jackson.”_

* * *

Juice thought about rescheduling his talk with Sheriff Stilinski in the wake of Dean’s resurrection and Jax and Opie’s homecoming, figuring the older man would have enough on his plate helping Stiles through it all. He chose to keep the meeting for the same reason he made it to begin with: Stiles.

“How was he this morning?” Stilinski asked, picking at his lunch with a fork. “With Jax, I mean.”

“About as angry as you’d expect him to be,” Juice knew Stiles harbored a lot of resentment over how his brothers handled their losses, and now that Jax and Opie were home, he was going to be releasing it how he saw fit. “He’s been holding onto that for awhile now.”

“I’m worried about Abel getting caught in the crossfire of whatever happens between Stiles and Jax,” John murmured sullenly. “I spoke to Jax a few minutes ago. He seems to think Stiles is just going to relinquish Abel to him, he’ll be allowed to pick Abel up like he left him with a babysitter overnight instead of an entire summer.”

“Stiles won’t let that happen,” There was no way they were giving that baby up without a fight. “Stiles wants Jax to be a father to Abel, but he’s gonna have to work for it and earn the right to be Abel’s dad again.”

“Can’t say Stiles is wrong in that,” John gave his son the credit he was due. “You’ve been caring for Abel alongside Stiles lately. Where do you land with all this?”

“I agree with Stiles intention,” He was only trying to do what was best for the baby. “I’m just not quite sure how he plans to get Jax to go along with all it. I’m hoping he goes about things more subtly than trying to burn down the clubhouse.”

“Yeah, you and me both,” John snorted, mood perking up. “Speaking of you and Stiles and Jax. Have you and Stiles talked about how you plan to tell Jax about the two of you?”

“No,” Although Juice had a pretty good idea of how Stiles would enjoy going about it. “Stiles will probably throw it in Jax’s face with a _‘you would’ve known if you’d been here.’_ Personally, I think a conversation might be the safest route.”

“Like this,” Stilinski gestured between them. “That’s what this lunch was about, right? You wanted to talk to me about you and Stiles?”

“I don’t want you to think I’m some creep taking advantage of your son,” The age difference between he and Stiles couldn’t be ignored no matter how mature Stiles was or how soon he’d reach his eighteenth birthday. “I’m too old for him, I know that. Things I did this summer are pretty much a laundry list of reasons for you to keep me away from him.”

“You are too old for him,” John agreed. “You’re also still a young man who makes mistakes, like the ones you made over the summer, but you’re mature enough to recognize they were mistakes and try to make amends for them.”

“I didn’t really recognize it,” It was more like his overdose had shocked his system to the point where he could see what a piece of shit he was. “I’ve been trying to be better. I don’t want to relapse again and put everyone through that.”

“I know how hard you’ve been working, and I’m very proud,” The sheriff offered him an encouraging smile. “But if I’m being completely honest, age difference aside momentarily… After all you and Stiles have been through recently, as individuals, I don’t think either of you are in the right headspace for a romantic relationship.”

“We didn’t intend for it to happen.”

“I know, but it has, and despite the obstacles, it works,” John remarked, leaning back in his desk chair. “You’ve helped Stiles get to a place where he _ **wants**_ to get up in the morning. He’s not just getting through the day ‘cause he has to take care of Abel or help the pack. You make him happy, and the two of you, together, that’s what he wants for himself.”

“It’s the same for me,” Since Juice had joined SAMCRO, that’s all his life had revolved around, he’d almost forgotten what it was like to love other things. “We know we jumped into things, and we’ve already decided we need to slow down so he can focus on school.”

“I’m happy to hear that,” John nodded, looking almost relieved by the admission. “The two of you making mature decisions like that is why I’m not going to interfere here. I have my reservations because of the age different, but I won’t tell you to break it off until he’s of age, even though I should. I just ask-- and I’ll talk to Stiles about this too—I just ask that you both be careful and take things through. You’re both young and have your whole lives ahead of you, there’s no need to rush headfirst into this.”

“Careful and slow,” Two things that had proved notoriously difficult for them in the past. “I mean, I can’t promise that, but it’s what Stiles and I talk about doing. W-We’re gonna try to do that.”

“All I ask is that you try.”

“Okay. Yeah, we will.”

* * *

When Dean heard the word ‘psychic’ his thoughts immediately went to Missouri Moseley, the kind yet blunt woman who provided another piece of the puzzle regarding his mother’s death. Outside of a condolence call following his dad’s death, he hadn’t seen or spoken to Missouri since that last day in Lawrence. For whatever reason, Dean assumed, if there came a time when they needed the assistance of a psychic, she would be the one they reached out to.

That wasn’t to say he was disappointed in Bobby’s choice of psychics, Pamela Barnes was, well… Pamela Barnes had a tattoo on the small of her back, peaking up from her jeans that read ‘Jesse Forever’. Definitely not Missouri Moseley, but certainly the subject of a future wet dream.

“Who’s Jesse?”

“Well, he wasn’t forever,” Pamela smirked, throwing Dean a saucy wink. “Who knows, his loss might be your gain.”

“Oh,” Under normal circumstances, Dean would dive tongue-first into that with a big ole grin on his face. “I’m flattered, but…”

“You’re spoken for,” She feigned disappointment. “How about grumpy?”

“Which grumpy?” Each of Dean’s three companions fell firmly into the ‘grumpy’ category. “As far as I know, they’re all single, but you know, I’m not really up-to-date on the who’s-who or what’s-what of things. See, I was out of town for awhile.”

“I heard. Out of the fire and back in the frying pan, huh?” Pamela clucked her tongue. “Makes you a rare individual.”

“If you say so,” Jury was still out on whether the rare factor was going to work in their favor or not. “You hear anything about my resurrection from anyone other than Bobby?”

“I Ouija’d my way through a dozen spirits. No one seems to know who broke you out or why,” She sighed, taking a pair of candles off a shelf. “Next step is a séance, I think. See if we can see who did the deed.”

“You’re not gonna summon it here, are you?” Dean was always ready to kick a little demon ass, but he preferred to know what he was up against first so he could properly prepare. “You have such a nice place here, I’d hate to mess it up taking on whatever it is that got me topside.”

“No. I just want to get a sneak peak at it,” Pamela clarified as she passed the candles to him. “Like a crystal ball without the crystal.”

“I’m game,” He was up for whatever it would take to shed some light on the thing that raised him from the dead. “What do you need from me?”

“I’ll need to touch something our mystery monster touched,” She said, raking her eyes down the length of him. “You got any ideas or should I pick a place I’d like to touch?”

“I like where your heads at, but, uh,” Again, he was spoken for, and until he and Jax had a chance to really talk about where they stood, he wasn’t going to play hide the cannoli with someone else, no matter how attractive they were. “There’s a handprint burned into my arm that wasn’t there when I died. Will that work?”

“I don’t see why not.”

“Hey, when you were, uh, asking the spirit world about the thing that reached out and touched me,” Dean licked his dry lips, suddenly nervous. “They didn’t, uh, they didn’t mention anything about my time downstairs, did they?”

“You can relax, Dean,” She patted his chest comfortingly. “Your secret’s safe with me.”

“And if the spirits start shootin’ their mouths off during the séance?”

“The only thing that gets shared with the class is the demon who brought you back.”

“Thanks.”

* * *

Stiles didn’t particularly enjoy breaking in new teachers, especially ones who felt they were entitled to students’ personal property, e.g.: cellphones. The new English teacher, Ms. Blake, had implemented the rule regarding cellular devices on the first day of school, if she saw one out and on in class, she’d give you one chance to put it away or she’d take it. Stiles and Ms. Blake had been at odds since the start of semester as a result of the arbitrary rule.

“Mr. Stilinski,” The teacher sighed as she stood next to his desk. “Your phone needs to be off and inside your backpack.”

“My phone is on silent and sitting quietly beside my pencil and notebook,” It wasn’t distracting him or the other students, it was simply there so he could see the screen light up if someone happened to call or text him. “That’s the best I can do.”

“I am not going to have this argument with you every time you attend my class, Mr. Stilinski,” Ms. Blake’s voice took on a minor tone of authority as she placed her hands on her hips and stared down her nose at him. “I’m going to confiscate your phone and send you to the principal’s office.”

“You can send me to the principal’s office if you like, but you’re not taking my phone,” Stiles wasn’t going to risk potentially missing an emergency call just ‘cause some barely-out-of-college teacher was on a power trip. “My dad’s a cop, and I’m the only family there is to contact if something happens to him. My kid has a serious heart condition and his grandma’s taking him to the doctor today, I need my phone so she can tell me if it goes well or if he needs further tests.”

“You have a kid?” Lydia gaped a him from her desk a row over. “Since when?”

“Since my brother decided to be a deadbeat,” Make no mistake, Abel was his child until Jax proved himself to be a fit parent in Stiles eyes. “I need to be available in case something happens with the baby, which is why I am not letting anyone take my phone, Ms. Blake.”

“I’m sorry you have a sick child, but I’m sure his grandmother is capable of handling any issues that could arise during his doctor’s appointment,” Ms. Blake retorted, her hand inching toward the device. “If it’s an emergency, she can call the main office.”

Ms. Blake was bolder than her click-bait ‘ _Heart of Darkness’_ first day of school text message might’ve suggested if she thought she was taking his phone, Stiles decided, watching her fingers close around the device. His patience was already running thin, his temper shorter than normal, and he was about to tell off, maybe use the _‘taking my phone is theft and my dad’s the sheriff’_ card just to shut her up and back her off, but nature had other ideas. Out of nowhere, a bird slammed against the windowpane of the classroom, leaving a glob of blood painting the glass.

“What the…?” Stiles flinched violently as hundreds of birds began slamming themselves full-force into the windows. “Holy shit.”

“Get down everyone!” Ms. Blake shouted, ducking between the rows of desks. “Get down! Get down! Get down!”

* * *

Watching some poor woman have her eyes burned out of her skull during a séance had not been on Derek’s punch card for the day, but it’s what happened. His dad’s psychic friend Pamela tried to get a glimpse of the creature responsible for Dean’s resurrection and paid for it in ways they couldn’t have anticipated.

“Doctors don’t have an update yet,” Bobby sighed, slumping into a chair beside Derek in the waiting room. “They’ll come find us when they do.”

“Okay.”

“Where’d Sam and Dean get off to?”

“They went to get something to eat,” How either of them could crave food while the smell of burning human organs still lingered in their nostrils was beyond him. “Said to call when there’s news.”

“Yeah,” Bobby nodded, scrubbing a hand down his face. “Hell of a day.”

“Yeah,” Derek grunted, stretching his legs out in front of him and crossing one over the other. “Sorry about your friend.”

“Should’ve known better than to call her in. It was my own goddamn fault,” His father cursed himself and the choices he’d made. “Anything with enough power to raise someone from the pits of hell wasn’t gonna take kindly to a game of peek-a-boo.”

“Probably could’ve thought things through a little more,” Derek usually wasn’t the one to slap a ‘proceed with caution’ advisory sticker on something, but he was learning how to think before acting. “What happens now? Research?”

“We try to summon the thing,” Bobby proposed a plan even more dangerous than the séance. “Pamela got us a name, Castiel.”

“Sounds more biblical than demonic,” Then again, Derek never spent much time in church, so what the hell did he know? “Are you going to summon it soon or wait a few days until you know more?”

“Why, you got somewhere to be?” Bobby questioned, head tilted to the side. “Something going on in Beacon Hills?”

“Usually,” There was rarely a calm or dull moment to be found in Beacon Hills. “I left Stiles in charge, and he probably roped Peter into helping him with things.”

“The two of them can handle whatever’s going on,” Bobby gave the pair his vote of approval. “Anything in particular you’re worried about?”

“No,” Just his missing betas the alpha pack making their presence known in the preserve. “Focus needs to be on this stuff with Dean. He’s—That’s what’s important.”

“Derek,” Bobby shook his head, arm twitching like he wanted to reach out to him, but wasn’t sure the touch would be welcome. “I know I’ve been distant this summer…”

“You lost your son,” Derek wasn’t going to blame him for retreating in the face of grief. “I was the same way after the fire.”

“I should have been there for you after the fire and this summer. I’m your father,” Remorse clouded the older man’s features. “I’m sorry, son.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Derek had learned how to get by, how to survive without his father at his side a long time ago. “I can take care of myself and my pack. The Winchesters are the ones that still need you.”

“Derek—“

“I’m gonna calls Stiles and Peter,” Derek stood from his chair and took his phone from his pocket. “Check in, see what’s going on.”

“Son—“

“I’ll be outside.”

* * *

The weird-shit meter in Beacon Hills was off the charts on a good day, so Juice wasn’t quite sure why the low-budget remake of _‘The Birds’_ was tripping him out.

“This is some biblical plague like shit,” Juice cringed at the dead birds littered around the classroom. “What the hell have Derek and Scott gotten into now?”

“No idea,” Stiles huffed, sitting on the edge of an avian-corpse free desk. “Derek’s kind of an adopted Winchester, so I wouldn’t put it past him to accidently unleash some kind of plague on the town.”

“Maybe you two want to keep it down,” Stilinski advised as he continued to assess the damage. “I know a good number of your classmates are in the know about just how special of a town Beacon Hills is, but not all of them are.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right. Sorry,” Juice glanced superstitiously to the others in the room, finding a few curious sets of eyes looking back at him. “People are staring. I think they heard us.”

“I don’t think that has anything to do with what we were talking about,” Stiles snorted, tugging the hem of Juice’s kutte, urging him closer. “It’s you. Your leather and skull tats. Oh, and your face.”

“My face?”

“It’s very pretty,” Stiles commented with a cheeky grin. “Sorry your lunch got cut short.”

“It’s not your fault,” Juice smiled, draping an arm over Stiles shoulders. “…Right?”

“I’m too busy to bring a bird-plague down on us,” Stiles chuckled darkly. “I’m not even interested in finding out who or what is responsible.”

“You’re such a liar,” Juice said fondly. “You’re dying to get out of here to research whatever this is.”

“Maybe.”

“That’s a good idea,” Stilinski remarked as he jotted information in his notepad. “The ‘go’ part, not the research.”

“I still have two classes left,” Stiles reminded his old man. “You want me to skip?”

“Stiles, there’s bird remains everywhere,” Stilinski motioned toward the blood and feathers splattered on the walls, floor, desks, and chalkboard. “It’s a biohazard.”

“Right. Everyone’s going home,” Stiles nodded, hopping off the desk. “Cool. Half-day.”

“I’m gonna go talk to Deaton, see if he has any insight into this,” The older man said, slipping the notepad and pen into his jacket pocket. “What are your plans? Are you going home or to Charming?”

“I should put in a few hours at the garage,” Stiles deflated at the thought. “But I’m not in the mood to deal with Jax right now.”

“Jax is out doing club business,” And that was as specific as Juice would get on that while there was a member of law enforcement present. “He probably won’t be back around until Bobby Elvis’s party.”

“Good to know,” Stiles snatched his backpack off the floor. “Guess I will go into work.”

“Make sure to get yourself something to eat,” Stilinski instructed his son. “Oh, and I know Isaac and the girl he was brought in with disappeared from the hospital, but I would like to talk to the girl about what happened.”

“I sent Peter to get Isaac, and he texted to confirm he did, but he didn’t say anything about a girl,” Stiles furrowed his brows in confusion. “He took Isaac to the old Hale house to recuperate, the last I heard he was still unconscious. I’ll have Peter ask him about the chick when he wakes up.”

“Okay,” Stilinski turned his attention to Juice. “You following him to Charming?”

“Yep,” Juice had no other business in Beacon Hills if Stiles was leaving. “I’ll make sure he stops to get something to eat on the way.”

“Appreciate that,” The older man clapped him on the back. “Tell Bobby Elvis ‘welcome home’ for me.”

“We will,” Stiles gave his dad a quick hug. “Hey Dad, be careful with all this, okay? This bird thing could have some environmental, scientific explanation, but it might not. Just be careful, please.”

“Stiles, I’m always careful.”

* * *

Okay, so maybe it was in poor taste to go out for a burger and fries after witnessing a friend of Bobby’s have her eyes burned out by some unforeseen force by the name Castiel. In Dean’s defense, he couldn’t help his hunger or his cravings, the stomach wanted what the stomach wanted when it wanted it. Of course, if he’d known the diner Sam chose would be infested with demons, he would have just gone to the hospital with Bobby and Derek and eaten out of the vending machine.

At least the demons were mostly docile, they didn’t get kill happy as soon as he and Sam walked into the joint. On the contrary, the head-bitch had posed as their waitress, taking their orders and delivering their food before putting the demon-side of her personality on display in the form of black eyes.

“Heard you were looking for us,” The possessed waitress, sporting a nametag identifying her as Flo, joined them at their table. “Dean Winchester. To hell and back. Aren’t you a lucky duck. What makes you so special?”

“I like to think it’s my perky nipples,” Dean joked, but no one was laughing. Kill joys. “I don’t know. Wasn’t my doing. I don’t know who pulled me out.”

“Right. You don’t,” The server rolled her eyes. “Lying’s a sin, you know.”

“I’m not lying,” Having the name wasn’t going to get him far unless their research turned up something. “But I’d like to find out, so if you wouldn’t mind enlightening me, Flo…”

“Mind your tone with me, boy,” The demon warned him. “I’ll drag you back to hell myself.”

“Try it,” Sam dared her. “I will kill you. Try it.”

“Relax, Sammy. She’s not gonna do anything,” If she were, Dean was sure she would have done it already. “She doesn’t know who cut me loose either. She’s looking for answers; her bosses aren’t telling her anything, it’s above her pay grade. Whoever it was, they want me out. And they’re a lot stronger than her.”

“I’m going to reach down your throat,” The demon sneered as she tried pathetically to threaten him once more. “And rip out your lungs.”

Dean knew a challenge when he heard one, and he never backed down from a challenge. He leaned across the table and sent his fist into the side of her face, twice. There was no retaliation for the assault, all the demon could do was glare at him.

“That’s what I thought,” Dean smirked, rising from his chair and dropping a few bills on to the table. “Come on, Sam. Let’s go.”

Sam may have followed him out of that diner, but he wasn’t happy about it. Dean could feel the annoyance radiating off his brother before he’d even opened his mouth to voice it.

“Dean, that diner is filled with demons,” Sam glanced over his shoulder at the establishment. “We’re not just going to leave them in there, are we?”

“We’ve only got a knife between us, Sam,” They hadn’t exactly walked into the restaurant prepared for battle. “I don’t know how you’ve been doing things since I’ve been gone, but—“

“I’ve been killing a hell of a lot more demons than the ones in there,” Sam declared proudly, as if stupidity and recklessness were things to be honored and praised. “Dean, we’ve got to take ‘em. They’re dangerous.”

“They’re scared,” It wasn’t a good sign when the demons were terrified as they were of whatever the hell had yanked Dean from the pit. “We’re already dealing with one bad mofo with this Castiel guy. One job at a time, okay. We need to figure out who Castiel is and what he wants, so I can go home and spend some time with Jax and Abel.”

“I get it, Dean, okay?” Sam frowned sympathetically. “Why don’t you go back to Charming? Bobby and I can handle this.”

“I’m sorry, do you think I forgot about that demon bitch-boy comment Derek made about you earlier?” For the sake of his sanity, Dean hadn’t wanted to dig into the remark, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t still on his mind. “Something’s going on with you, and I’m not leaving until I figure out what it is.”

“What happened to ‘one job at a time’?”

“You’re not a job, Sam, you’re my brother,” As much as Dean would like to just let it go, he was pretty sure if he did, it would come back to him in the ass someday soon. “Let’s head back to the motel and get some research done on this Castiel guy while we wait for Bobby and Derek to finish up at the hospital.”

“Yeah, okay, Dean.”

“Good. I’m driving.”

* * *

Peter was a reasonable man, or rather his patience often ran out long before his reason. It wasn’t unreasonable for Stiles to request he embark on a mission to rescue Isaac in Derek’s absence. However, Scott butting into the situation and forcing Peter to listen to his endless yapping tested Peter’s patience in ways he never thought possible.

“I knew I wanted to get a tattoo when I was eighteen. I always wanted one. I decided to get it now to make it kind of a reward,” Scott droned on and on, as if he truly believed Peter or anyone else gave a shit about his wants or desires. “A reward for not calling Allison all summer, even when I really wanted to, even when it was so hard not to sometimes.”

“You rewarded yourself for not stalking your ex-girlfriend?” Peter chortled, shaking his head. “That’s the most _**Scott**_ thing you’ve said since you followed me from the hospital.”

“I was trying to give her the space she wanted,” Scott said petulantly. “Anyway. I went to the tattoo parlor last night to get it done.”

“I can’t begin to tell you how much I don’t care.”

“It went fine, you know. I got my two bands without a problem, but afterward, when I was in the car, it disappeared. It was like it healed or something,” Scott curled his fingers around his bicep, presumably where the tattoo had been inked into his skin. “Derek has that triskelion tattoo on his back. I thought maybe he could help me.”

“Yes, of course you did,” They had so little going on they could afford to drop everything to assist the teenager with every minor inconvenience in his life. “I’m sure he can pencil you in somewhere between finding Erica and Boyd, defeating the alpha pack, and aiding the Winchesters in finding whatever brought Dean back.”

“What’s an alpha pack?”

“Exactly what it sounds like,” Their title in itself was pretty self-explanatory. “A pack made up entirely of alphas.”

“Those wolves at the hospital, the one who tried to take Isaac and the one who spoke to me in the elevator, they were part of that pack,” Scott guessed, and correctly too, that was an unexpected switch. “H-How does that even work with all of them being alphas?”

“There’s still a leader among them. You met him. Deucalion,” Peter could recall a time when Deucalion was a respected member of the werewolf community, an alpha who stood tall beside Talia, but that was prior to his run-in with the Argents that left him blinded. “We’re not 100% certain, but we believe they have Erica and Boyd. While you’ve been pining for your huntress in training these last few months, we’ve been looking for them.”

“I wasn’t pining,” Scott scowled. “I had summer school and work.”

“We didn’t need your help, Scott,” They were chasing their tails just fine on their own. “And we don’t need it now.”

“How do you defeat an alpha pack?”

“The same way you defeat the Argents,” Peter brandished his claws, bringing particular attention to the ones he used to slit Kate Argent’s throat. “Unless you prefer slow poisoning, as you did with Gerard…”

“N-No.”

“No matter,” Peter retracted his claws. “My way is far more humane anyway.”

* * *

The MC didn’t need a reason to party, a sunny day or warm night was reason enough to tap the kegs, roll the joints, and call in the croweaters, but tonight was different. Tonight was Bobby’s homecoming. A party of that importance called for top shelf liquor, high-end pussy (well, high-end-ish), music that’d blow your ear drums, and a variety of drugs designed to make you forget whatever was wrong with your miserable excuse for a life.

The only downsides to gathering large groups of people in a singular location were unwelcome surprises and uninvited guests. For Gemma, the unwelcome surprise came in the form of her husband cornering her as she was locking up the office.

“Where the hell is Jax?”

“How the hell should I know?” Gemma had only caught passing glimpses of her oldest all day. “Why? What’s he done?”

“Got a call from Alvarez on the prepay,” Clay growled, lips drawn back in a snarl. “Said the Niners went into his hood, killed one of his guys. They blew out his guts, left him holding up nine fingers.”

“Jesus,” That was an image Gemma did not need on her mind. “What’s that got to do with Jax?”

“You just tell him I’m looking for him,” Clay ordered, head swiveling toward the front gate of the garage where an expensive car was pulling in. “What the fuck is this now?”

“Well, it ain’t Bobby Elvis.”

Two men climbed out of the vehicle, and judging by their attire, Gemma would wager the one dressed in a suit was a wealthy businessman type, while the hired muscle was the one with an upside down peace sign tat on his neck. Whoever they were, they didn’t seem afraid or apprehensive as they strolled over to meet Clay in the middle of the lot, not even when Chibs, Tig, Juice and Happy stepped up to bracket their pres as a show of force.

“Garage is closed.”

“We’re not here for, uh, car repairs,” The suit announced as he held out of a decorative cigar box. “I understand you’re a Comanche fan, Mr. Morrow.”

“This is a private party,” Clay said, refusing to give the gift the slightest consideration. “Who are you?”

“Ethan Zobelle,” The suit introduced himself. “This is my associate, A.J. Weston.”

“We just dropped by to give you a little advice,” The muscle spoke up. “About the people you do business with.”

“You should stop dealing arms to the One Niners and the Mayans,” Zobelle started, eyes landing on Gemma as he continued. “We feel that would be best for all concerned.”

“I don’t even know what you’re talking about,” Clay’s claim of innocence was only belied by the smirk gracing his lips. “We’re just mechanics and Harley lovers. You, though, hell of a suit. All your teeth. Expensive car. Must be top of the Aryan food chain, huh?”

“What you do for a living is between you and your maker. I’m not here to adjust your moral compass. This is just a reality check. You’re a criminal and you’re done selling guns to color,” Zobelle bent down, setting the cigar box at Clay’s feet like some kind of consolation prize for the loss of business he was proposing, and earned Tig’s gun in his face for the offering. “Are you going to shoot me, Mr. Trager? With all these witnesses?”

“Look, I don’t know what you’ve heard and, uh, I don’t know what your angle is, but let me be clear. Nobody threatens SAMCRO. And nobody tells us what we can and can’t do. Black, brown or white,” Clay dropped his mocking politeness in favor of a threatening tone. “So, why don’t you climb back into your little German clown car and drive back to nazi town. ‘Cause next time you piss all over my shoes, he will kill you. I don’t care how many witnesses there are.”

“My shop opens in a few weeks,” Zobelle handed him a business card. “Until then…enjoy the cigars.”

The men left with as much confidence as they’d driven in with, almost like they had gotten exactly what they had come for.

“I want to know everything,” Clay thrust the business card into Juice’s hands. “ _ **Everything.**_ ”

“Absolutely.” Juice accepted the card and the task and turned on his heels toward the clubhouse.

“Juice,” Gemma weaved through the crowd to meet him at the door. “What was that bullshit?”

“No idea,” Juice shrugged, thumbing the business card. “That’s why Clay wants me to look into the guy.”

“Let me know what you find out,” With how strained things had been between them, she couldn’t trust Clay to keep her informed on potential threats. “Where’s Stiles? I thought he’d be here for Bobby.”

“He’s at Jax’s with the baby.”

“Isn’t he avoiding Jax?”

“Yeah, I don’t think he plans to be at the house long.”

“Is that right…”

* * *

Derek and Bobby left the hospital only after the doctor assured them Pamela would pull through. It was for the best, really, it’s not like they could do anything for her while she was sedated. Derek had a feeling they were probably the last people the psychic would want to see when she regained consciousness anyhow, so returning to the hotel to check in with Sam and Dean was all they could do.

Derek didn’t follow his father up when they got back to the motel. Remaining in the car was a vain attempt to carve out a few minutes to just breathe and gather his thoughts. All in all he had maybe two minutes to himself before he noticed Sam slinking out of the motel and into the Impala.

It was a combination of concern and lack of trust that compelled Derek to follow Sam to some dimly-lit diner on the other side of town. He could have stayed in the car and used his enhanced hearing to eavesdrop on the hunter, but the eerie, electric feeling encompassing the entire block suggested whatever was going to happen was better seen not heard. He pulled himself out of the car and walked up the street to the diner, peering through the window to watch Sam confront a young woman wearing an apron.

“ _I can smell your soul a mile away,”_ The woman turned to face Sam and the window, offering a clear view of the empty, burned out sockets in her face.

“ _Your eyes…”_ Sam gasped, face twisted in a grimace. _“It was here. You saw it. What was it?”_

“ _It’s the end…”_ The waitress said ominously. _“We’re dead. We’re all dead.”_

“ _What did you see?”_

“ _Go to hell.”_ She spit at the hunter.

“ _Funny,”_ Sam sneered. _“I was going to say the same thing to you.”_

Derek expected Sam’s next move to involve the demon knife or an exorcism, but the younger of the Winchester brother had other ideas. Sam’s face was the picture of concentration as he closed his eyes and raised his right hand, stretching it out toward the woman. Black smoke began to pour out of her mouth and into her hands until she collapsed to the floor, the smoke disappearing beneath her.

“What the hell?” Derek had never seen anything like that before.

“ _Crap,”_ Sam crouched beside the body, pressing two fingers to her throat for signs of a pulse. _“Damn it.”_

“ _Getting pretty slick there, Sam,”_ A petite, dark haired woman lathered the hunter with praise – the same woman Dean had mistaken for a call girl when they’d first arrived at Sam’s motel. _“Better all the time.”_

“ _What the hell is going on, Ruby?”_

“Ruby.” That was all Derek needed, that name.

That name plus what he’d just witnessed Sam do was more than enough to know that whatever Sam had gotten up to over the summer, and whatever he was doing now, was going to have major ramifications for them all.

“Shit,” Derek muttered to himself as he trudged back to his car. “Dean’s going to kill him.”

* * *

Stiles wasn’t pissed, as some would assume given his recent behavior. He was angry. What was the difference between pissed and angry? Well, it was simple.

‘Pissed’ was trivial. You could be pissed off about bad traffic or cold soup, anything really, it was a versatile emotion. Anger was personal, primal. Anger had the ability to manifest into a bone-deep rage that would settle inside you for as long as your heart or conscience would allow. So, no, Stiles wasn’t pissed. He was fucking angry.

He was angry with his brothers for the way they walked out on their children. He had given them the go-ahead to take a few weeks and sort themselves out after losing Donna and Dean, and they’d chosen to stay away for months to help Sam hunt every random demon he came across. The moment grief stopped being the reason for the absence, that was the moment they abandon their children, and that was when Stiles had reached a level of anger he’d never experienced.

And, you know, Stiles wasn’t stupid, he knew a good portion of his fury stemmed from being abandon by his bio-mom as an infant, and for that reason alone most would call it irrational and misplaced. He honestly didn’t care what anyone thought or if they understood why he couldn’t welcome his brothers back with open arms. He understood it, and in the end that’s all that mattered. He wasn’t going to apologize for how he felt, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to explain himself.

“You think you could cut your brother a little slack?” Gemma started in on him as soon as she came through the door. “He’s been through hell.”

“No, Dean’s been through hell. Life’s just felt like hell to the rest of us,” They couldn’t compare their rough summers to the pit when a member of their extended family had actually been downstairs. “And cutting Jax slack is why he thought it was cool to bail on everyone.”

“He lost someone.”

“We all lost someone,” The world didn’t stop spinning, even if they wanted it to. “We managed to keep moving forward. That’s what you do when you have people that need you.”

“So what’s the plan, Stiles?” Gemma inquired, nodding to the bags of baby supplies he was in the process of packing up. “You just gonna take Abel to Beacon Hills because you’re pissed at Jax?”

“I’m taking Abel because I know Jax isn’t capable of caring for him on his own, and I don’t trust him to stick around for him,” Stiles couldn’t leave his nephew with Jax if he was just going to take off again. “And I can’t keep doing this back and forth crap before school. It’s just nights, Gem. You’ll still have him during the day; you just have to pick him up in the morning.”

“You’re lucky if I let you take him out of this house.”

“Jax could have stopped me when I walked out of the house with Abel this morning. He didn’t,” His brother had been too focused on Dean to acknowledge the child he hadn’t seen in months. “I bet he didn’t call or go into the office to check on Abel once today, did he?”

“He was getting caught up with club business.”

“As we know, club business always comes first to Jax,” It’d been that way since before Stiles was born. “It’s funny, ‘cause Juice always managed to check on Abel a couple times a day.”

“No disrespect, but Juice is pretty low in the ranks. He may hack into a database for them once in a while, but most days he’s just a grunt,” Gemma remarked disparagingly. “Jax is the VP, he has more responsibility.”

“What about his responsibility to his son?” Was it naïve of Stiles to believe Jax’s son should come first for him? “If you keep making excuses for him like that, he’s going to become the same kind of father JT was.”

“You don’t know shit about JT.”

“I know enough. I know what I’ve heard from people who knew him. I know what little Jax remembers about him,” Jax worshipped JT, but he hardly knew the man. “Jax talks about JT like he died when he was a little kid, when really he was seventeen when JT was smeared across 580. JT was too busy running off to Belfast to be there for Jax, and he sure as hell wasn’t there for Thomas when he was dying. Is that the kind of father you want Jax to be? Is that what you want for Abel?”

“Jackson is not JT,” Gemma said sternly. “He’s gonna be a good father, you’d see that if you’d give him a chance.”

“I am giving him a chance. I don’t want to raise Abel forever,” Stiles loved his nephew, treasured their time together, but at some point he just wanted to be Uncle Stiles who babysat once in a while. “I am giving him a chance to prove he can be a father, that he can be trusted to be present for Abel, and that Abel matters to him.”

“He shouldn’t have to prove himself to you.”

“And I shouldn’t have had to spend the last four months raising his child,” What was that old saying, life isn’t fair? “This is where we’re at, Gem. I’m not being unreasonable.”

“You need to talk to Jax about this,” Gemma urged him. “Explain what you’re doing and why. You don’t want him to jump to conclusions; he’ll lose his fucking mind.”

“Well, I still have stuff to pack up here,” Not only did have the baby’s things, but some of his own as well. “If he shows up before I finish, I’ll talk to him. I can’t stay long, though, I have school in the morning.”

“Fine,” Gemma huffed. “I’ll tell him to head home.”

“Oh, goody.”

“Do I need to stay and play referee?”

“When have we ever needed a referee?” Sure, he and Jax had gotten into a couple vicious fights over the years, but it was all strictly verbal sparring matches, it had never gotten physical. “We’ll be fine. You can go.”

“All right,” She kissed his cheek. “I’m gonna stop by the clubhouse to see Bobby Elvis, then I’m going home.”

“Tell Elvis ‘hi’ for me.”

“I will.”

* * *

Given the incident with Pamela, summoning the thing responsible for Dean climbing out of his own grave seemed like a monumentally terrible idea. Of course, as Derek was learning, his father and the Winchesters excelled at that sort of thing, and he’d been guilty of it himself on occasion. He probably could have talked them out of it, at the very least temporarily pumped the brakes by telling his dad and Dean what he’d seen Sam do, but he really did not want to drop that bomb until he consulted someone who knew the Winchesters better. With no real excuse to offer, Derek was forced to follow his dad and adoptive brother to a creepy warehouse in the middle of nowhere.

To be fair, the building wasn’t creepy until his dad and Dean gave it a makeover. The pair covered the place from top to bottom with protection sigils and runes – they weren’t going to risk a reenactment of what happened to the psychic. Once the place was sufficiently secure, the chanting started, adding to the creep factor significantly.

“You sure you did the ritual right?” Dean asked Bobby after a beat of silence. “Maybe we should try a different ritual.”

“Maybe you should have a little patience,” Bobby griped, closing the book and setting it on the table. “Give it a—“

“Something’s coming,” The hairs on the back of Derek’s neck stood on end and a shiver ran down his spine. “It’s close.

“Hey, whoa,” Dean took a cautious step back as Derek’s fangs dropped and his claws extended on their own volition. “Whoa, man. Put your wolf back in his cage. We don’t need him right now.”

“I’m not doing this,” Derek growled, digging his claws into the meat of his thighs. “There’s something here. It-it’s… My wolf thinks it’s a threat.”

“So it is evil.”

“I don’t know,” Derek wasn’t picking up on those kind of vibes. “It’s strong.”

As if on cue, something heavy crashed and thumped on the roof as the walls of the warehouse began to shake and rattle. The doors burst open, the overhead light bulbs shattered, and sparks flew, a trench coat clad, disheveled man appearing in its wake.

“There goes whatever hope I had of all that noise being the wind,” Dean grunted, cocking his trusty shotgun. “Who are you?”

“I’m the one who gripped you tight and raised you from perdition,” The dark-haired man declared in a gravely, monotonous voice. “We need to talk, Dean.”

“Did you crash onto the roof?” Derek had no idea what possessed him to ask that when there was real questions they needed answers to, but now it was out there. “I mean…”

“No,” The man replied, casting an annoyed, unimpressed gaze in Derek’s direction. “I did not crash onto the roof.”

“That’s what it sounded like,” For reasons that were lost to him, Derek refused to let it go. “Something hit the roof pretty hard.”

“Derek,” His father snapped at him, an incredulous expression on his face. “You need to stop spending so much time with Stiles.”

“I know.”

“I am an angel of the Lord,” The man said as the shadow of a giant set of wings appeared on the wall behind him. “I do not crash into things.”

“Right,” Derek could hear the uptick in the so-called angel’s pulse that called out the lie, but he wouldn’t mention it. “Sure.”

“I need to speak with Dean,” The angel dismissed Derek and Bobby, setting his sights on the lone Winchester in the warehouse. “Alone.”

* * *

Jax was already home by the time he got around to checking his messages, in particular a voicemail from his mother demanding he skip Bobby’s party to head home so he and Stiles could talk. Unfortunately, that message was left about three hours earlier, and Stiles and Abel were long gone by the time Jax had stumbled into the house. He thought briefly about calling his brother so they could have things out over the phone, but he didn’t want the headache the conversation would leave him with.

He wasn’t so dense that he didn’t understand why Stiles was pissed at him. Stiles believed Jax had abandoned their family, Jax disagreed, but nothing he said was going to change his brother’s mind. What he took issue with was Stiles using Abel as a pawn to punish Jax for his supposed transgressions. Nevertheless, Jax wasn’t up to poking that bear at the moment, and he didn’t see the harm in leaving Abel with Stiles for one more night, or letting Stiles stew in his anger and self-righteousness a little longer.

So, no, Jax didn’t call his brother to have his ass chewed out or demand his son be brought home immediately. No, when he settled in for the night, he called the person whose voice he’d been longing to hear all summer.

“ _What’s wrong, Jax?”_

“You’ve been dead for four months,” What was more wrong than that? “I barely had a chance to see you at home, ‘cause my brother started acting like an asshole.”

“ _I think he just missed you.”_

“Yeah, well, I missed you,” It felt like he spent a lifetime missing Dean. “You on your way home yet?”

“ _Uh, no.”_

“Dean…” Goddamn it, Jax had already had a shit day. “What happened? You didn’t find Sam?”

“ _I found him.”_

“Then what’s the problem?”

“ _We summoned the thing that brought me back.”_

“And you’re still alive and able to answer the phone,” Jax took that to mean the meeting couldn’t have gone too badly. “What happened?”

“ _The first time, it burned out a woman’s eyes. A psychic friend of Bobby’s who was trying to help us out.”_

“Holy shit,” He stood corrected, things had gone horribly, and he was sorry he asked. “Wait. You said ‘first time’?”

“ _The second time it showed itself. It looked like a normal guy, but it knocked Bobby and Derek out just by pressing his fingers to their foreheads.”_

“Huh,” He supposed that was better than having their eyes burned out or worse. “Not you?”

“ _No. No, it talked to me.”_

“What did it say?” Knowing the Winchesters, it couldn’t have been anything good. “What was it?”

“ _It said it was an angel of the Lord.”_

“An angel…” That couldn’t be right, he must’ve misheard. “What?”

“ _Apparently, God commanded my resurrection, because he had work for me.”_

“There wasn’t a lot of oxygen in that coffin when you came to, was there?”

“ _I’m not making this shit up. That’s what he said.”_

“That God has work for you?”

“ _Yeah.”_

“You’re not exactly the religious type,” Or maybe it was the Holy Spirit who had misheard things. “Actually, you do say ‘oh God’ a lot when I’m sucking your dick. Maybe he mistook that for prayer.”

“ _Fuck you.”_

* * *

Stiles did as Gemma asked, waited for Jax to come home so they could talk. Yeah, he waited all right, up until he heard the telltale rumble of Jax’s bike in the distance. He and Abel were gone before the Dyna’s headlamp could illuminate the driveway.

They didn’t go far, just across town to Juice’s place to drop off a few of his belongings that had accumulated at Jax’s house. Juice hadn’t made it home yet, so Stiles made sure to stop by the clubhouse to let the other man know he and Abel were heading out. From there it should have been a straight shot north to Beacon Hills, but their trip was cut short rather quickly when an unusual sight a few miles up the 18 caught Stiles eye.

“What’s she doing all the way out here?”

Stiles carefully steered toward the utility house just off the road, parking beside Gemma’s caddy, which had no business being there at any hour of the day, let alone the middle of the night.

“Abel, buddy, I’ll be right back,” He promised his slumbering nephew as he cracked the windows and grabbed a wrench from the floorboards beneath the passenger seat. “It’s okay, buddy. I’ll be right outside.”

It wasn’t ideal to leave a baby in the car alone, but he didn’t know what he was walking into and he didn’t wouldn’t put Abel at risk. And, yes, it was probably reckless to get out of the Jeep and enter an unknown situation without calling for back up, but considering the clubhouse party was still going strong, his local backup was currently three sheets to the wind or passed out in their own piss and vomit, therefore useless to him. Logically, Stiles could call his dad, but it would take him 2hrs to make the drive from Beacon Hills and Stiles wasn’t willing to wait that long.

“Gem?” Stiles called out as he inspected her car. “Gemma!”

The Cadillac was cool to the touch when Stiles placed his palm to the hood, indicating it had been sitting for some time, but he couldn’t see any outward signs of damage or a reason for Gemma to have abandoned it on the side of the road. To make matters all the more worrisome, a look inside the window showed the keys still in the ignition and Gemma’s purse sitting on the seat.

“She’d never leave her purse or keys behind,” Stiles murmured to himself, tightening his grip on the wrench as panic set in. “Gemma! Gemma, can you hear me?!”

His first instinct was to search every inch of the surrounding area until he found something, any kind of sign of where she could have gone or what could have happened to her, but a search was out of the question. He couldn’t leave Abel in the car for the time it would take to conduct a thorough search, and he couldn’t take the baby with him to have a look around when he didn’t know what dangers were lurking in the dark. The only thing he could do was call out to Gem and hope she was close enough to hear him.

“Gemma!”

“S-Sti…” A muffled voice sound from inside the utility house. “St-Sti-Stiles…”

The utility shed was locked up tight; Stiles had to get a crowbar from the Jeep to pry the door open. He knew nothing good would be found behind that door, but that didn’t prepare him for Gemma lying beaten to hell on the dirty concrete floor, covered only with a ratty blanket while her boots and clothing were piled in a heap beside her.

“Gem…” He choked out her name like a sob, bile rising in his throat. “Oh, my god.”

“Get me out of here.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next: Stilinski must make peace with a former friend in order to help Gemma. Stiles reaches out to Charming's new Sheriff. Derek gets answers about his missing betas from an unexpected source. The club deals with the repercussions of Jax's decision to pin the Mayan murder on the Niners. The Winchesters reckon with past failures.


	3. Small Tears

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Unbeta'd.  
> Warnings: Mentions of rape/non-con & past sexual abuse.
> 
> Episodes: Sons of Anarchy 2x02 Small Tears, Supernatural 4x02 Are you there, God? It's me, Dean Winchester.
> 
> **Regarding gifs: Due to my incredibly shitty internet service uploading gifs and going on tumblr or any other website isn't really an option at the moment. I'm at dial-up level loading speeds here. I'll be able to gif again once that changes, no idea when that'll be.

Stiles had been taught that if he came across someone who’d been assaulted, he should first check that the attackers were gone, call 911, and then let trained medical professionals and the police take over from there. In this particular case the hospital was out as Gemma had nixed the idea as soon as Stiles had suggested it, which only left one option: the cops. While Charming PD was out of the question for obvious reasons, there was still at least one member of the Beacon Hills Sheriff’s Department with whom they both trusted with their lives.

“Stiles?” His dad addressed him as they met in the parking lot of the station. “What’s going on? What are you doing here so late? Why aren’t you at home?”

“I-I need help,” No. No, that wasn’t right. _**He**_ wasn’t right. It wasn’t him. “Sh-She needs help.”

“She?” His father glanced over his shoulder, catching a glimpse of the woman in the passenger seat of the Jeep. “Gemma. Gemma needs help? What happened?”

“I-I-I don’t…” He fumbled his words, unable to find the right ones to describe what Gemma had endured. “S-Sh-She… They… I…”

“Relax, buddy,” His dad tried to calm him with a soothing tone and steadying hands on his shoulders. “Deep breath, son. It’s okay. You’re okay. You’re here with me. You’re safe. Gemma’s safe. It’s okay.”

“No, it’s not,” Things were as far from okay as they could get. “You… You don’t under-understand. You don’t know.”

“I want to,” The older man nodded slowly, encouraging Stiles to speak up. “But I can’t until you tell me what’s going on.”

“I… She… Damn it!” Stiles cursed his inability to string a cohesive sentence together. “I-I gave her my-my lacrosse uniform. It was still in the J-Jeep.”

“What?” His father’s grip on his shoulders tightened to the point of almost painful. “Why—Um. W-Why would Gemma need your lacrosse uniform?”

“T-The blanket wasn’t enough,” And he thought his loose-fitting uniform would be preferable to her trying to force her brutalized body back into her jeans and blouse. “S-She needed… She needed more.”

“Okay,” His dad swallowed thickly. “Son, I want you to stay right here while I talk to Gem. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

Stiles saw no trepidation from his father as he moved around to the passenger side of the Jeep. There was only a deep inhalation of breath as he pulled the door open and took in the unobstructed, up-close view of Gemma’s visible injuries.

“Oh, Gem…” He sighed, lifting the woman’s chin with his fingers to inspect the damage. “What happened, honey?”

“You’re a smart man, baby,” Gemma murmured, leaning in to his touch. “I’m sure you can figure it out.”

“I’m not gonna ask who, not yet,” He assured her, gently caressing the laceration on her cheek. “We need to get you to the hospital, get you checked out.”

“She wouldn’t let me take her,” Stiles mentioned, fidgeting nervously with the frayed cuff of his shirtsleeve. “She wouldn’t go.”

“I’d have to check in,” Gemma groused, pushing John’s hand away. “My insurance is shit.”

“Gem—“

“Everybody’ll know,” She said somberly, dropping her gaze to the floorboards of the car. “That can’t happen.”

“Well, you need medical attention, so…” Stiles’ dad trailed off as he considered their options and formulated a plan. “Our insurance is pretty good. We’ll take you to Beacon Hills Memorial and check you in under Stiles name.”

“That’s insurance fraud,” Gemma pointed out. “You could get fired for that, have charges brought against you.”

“Yeah, I could,” John shrugged his shoulders, unbothered by the threats to his career or personal wellbeing. “I’ll take the risk.”

“Who are you gonna get to doctor the paperwork?” Stiles questioned, realizing they’d need someone on the inside to pull off the ruse. “We’re not in good standing with anyone on staff at BHMH, not enough to any of them to ask for that kind of favor.”

“We’re not anymore, but we were once,” His dad muttered with a frown. “You made up with Scott, I can make peace with Melissa.”

“Easier said than done,” Stiles mumbled. “Her holier-than-thou crap is ten times worse than Scott’s. She actually thinks she’s Mother Teresa or Mother Superior or whoever.”

“I’ll find a way to convince her to help us,” His dad declared confidently. “I can be very persuasive.”

“You guys should take the baby with you,” Stiles wasn’t in the right mindset to continue driving with any passengers in his car let alone an infant. “I need to go back to Charming.”

“You are not going to tell Jax about this,” Gemma’s stern order left absolutely room for argument. “You won’t tell anyone. Not Juice. Not Piney. Not Jax. Not Clay. _**No one**_.”

“They’re gonna see your face,” Make-up could cover-up the bruising, but it couldn’t make the swelling disappear. “I’m gonna make sure you have an excuse to give them.”

“How are you gonna do that?”

“If I told you, you wouldn’t let me do it.”

“Be careful,” Gemma advised him. “Charming…it’s not safe right now.”

“I know.”

* * *

There were quite a few creatures Dean had come across over the years whose very existence was difficult to process, but none more than the thing calling itself Castiel.

“I was not groped by an angel,” Dean would die on that hill, if only because believing it made him feel dirty and violated. “I know that much, all right?”

“The handprint burned into your shoulder says otherwise,” Derek remarked in an unbearably snarky tone. “That thing, Castiel, it lied about crashing onto the roof, not about what it was.”

“Well, your lie detector must be on the fritz, because there’s no such thing as angels,” Dean was so confident of that fact that he’d bet money on it – not his money, but someone’s. “Don’t you think if angels were real, that some hunter somewhere would have seen one at some point…ever?”

“You just did,” Sam tutted. “You and Bobby and Derek.”

“I’m trying to come up with a theory here. One with less fairy dust on it,” Dean would very much appreciate it if everyone stopped poking holes in it before it was fully formed. “Work with me here, please.”

“If you chuckleheads are done arguing religion, I may have something that substantiates our new feathery friend’s claim,” Bobby announced as he strolled into the living room carrying a stack of books. “I’ve got all this pre-Biblical lore. Some of it’s in damn cuniform. It all says an angel can snatch a soul from the pit.”

“Oh Christ, there’s lore to back this up,” Dean whined like a petulant child, but still wasn’t ready to buy into the whole ‘angel’ thing. “What else? What else could do it?”

“Airlift your ass out of the hotbox?” Bobby shrugged, setting the books on the coffee table. “As far as I can tell, nothing.”

“A demon didn’t pull you out. Shouldn’t that be a good thing?” Derek asked curiously. “Angels are supposed to be the good guys, right?”

“Aren’t you supposed to be a bloodthirsty monster that eats human hearts on the full moon?” Dean countered. “’Cause, you know, that’s what the lore says about werewolves.”

“Hey, don’t pick on him because you can’t handle that angels could be real, therefore God might be too,” Sam jumped to their adoptive brother’s defense. “Look, Dean, I know you’re not all choir boy about this stuff, but this is becoming less and less about faith and more and more about proof.”

“Proof? You mean proof there’s a god out there that actually gives a crap about me personally?” Dean scoffed, shaking his head. “I mean, I’ve saved some people, okay? I figured that made up for the stealing and ditching chicks. But why do I deserve to be saved? I’m just a regular guy.”

“Apparently,” Sam smirked like the smug bastard he was. “You’re a regular guy that’s important to the man upstairs.”

“Well, that creeps me out,” Dean grimaced. “I don’t like being singled out at birthday parties, much less by God.”

“Really? You struck me as the kinda person to strap on a brightly colored party hat so everyone know it’s your birthday,” Derek joked, earning a middle-fingered salute from the elder Winchester. “Now that that we’re all at least semi-agreed that Castiel is an angel, what the hell are we supposed to do with that information?”

“I got a friend one state over – Olivia Lowry,” Bobby took his cellphone from his pocket. “I’ve been trying to reach her about this angel thing, but I haven’t been able to get a hold of her. It’s not like her to ignore my calls.”

“What do you want to do?”

“We’re gonna go check on her,” Bobby decided. “You guys follow me.”

* * *

John hadn’t spoken much to Melissa since the bond between their families had disintegrated in the midst of all the hunter/werewolf drama. While their boys had more or less made up over the summer, spurred on by personal losses, there had been no catalyst for John and Melissa to do the same. Given the dangers that had encompassed their lives on a daily basis, it stood to reason that an act of violence would be what brought them together once more.

“Melissa,” He greeted her with a tight smile. “Thank you for meeting me.”

“Is Scott okay?” The nurse questioned, eyes scouring the surrounding area, as if she thought her son might limp out of the darkness. “Your message was vague.”

“Scott’s fine, as far as I know,” If the teenager was up to something, he was flying under the sheriff department’s radar. “Look, I need a favor—I know I have no right to ask. I wouldn’t have come to you unless it was serious and there was no other option.”

“Did something happen to Stiles?”

“No,” Thank God for that, his son had been through enough in his short life. “It’s Gemma.”

“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me,” Melissa snorted, lips twisting in a sneer. “You need to find someone else for whatever you have in mind. I am not helping that woman.”

“There is no one else, Melissa,” If there were, he never would have turned to her to begin with. “I-I know we’ve all fired shots in this war in the name of our sons, but I need— _ **Gemma**_ needs a ceasefire right now. Okay? Please.”

“I don’t care what she needs.”

“She was assaulted, Melissa,” It wasn’t John’s place to go into detail, even if it was, he didn’t have details to offer. “She needs to be checked out.”

“Doesn’t her biker club have a personal medic or some mob doctor they pay off?” Melissa stubbornly refused to come to the matriarch’s aide. “Have them stitch her up.”

“She doesn’t want them to know,” If Stiles hadn’t stumbled upon her, she probably wouldn’t have told anyone what happened to her. “And it’s not as simple as a couple stitches. Her injuries are more…internal. She’s gonna need tests. Tests for...tests for sexually transmitted diseases.”

“Sexually transmitted…” Melissa tensed as the realization of what happened dawned on her. “So when you say she was assaulted, you mean raped.”

“Yes.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“I haven’t been able to get much information from her,” He hadn’t wanted to push when she clearly wasn’t ready to talk about it. “But I got the impression there were multiple assailants.”

“I don’t need to….” Melissa motioned for him to stop speculating about the assault. “This happened in Beacon Hills?’

“No. No, it happened in Charming.” That much John knew for sure. “Stiles found her and brought her to me. He was scared, didn’t know what else to do.”

“He brought her to the one person he knew would keep her safe,” Melissa noted sadly. “And for some reason, you brought her to me.”

“She needs medical treatment. She won’t get it on her own because of her insurance,” Which brought him to the second half of his request that she wouldn’t like anymore than the first. “If you agree to help, I need her to be checked in under Stiles name. He’s covered by my insurance; it’s much better than hers.”

“That’s illegal,” Melissa commented pointedly. “I could lose my job. I could go to jail.”

“If we get caught, you tell them I used my position as sheriff to coerce you into forging the paperwork,” John was willing to deal with the consequences on his own if it came down to it. “That should help you avoid criminal charges, and the hospital won’t fire you if they believe I threatened you.”

“Do you have any idea the kind of position you’re putting me in?”

“Yes, I do,” The same position their children had put him in every time they broke the law during a werewolf-related crisis. “And I know you and Gemma don’t like each other. You have no reason to involve yourself in this, but… she’s been hurt. She needs help, you’re the only person who can give it to her. Please.”

“Okay, fine,” Melissa relented, giving into his request. “Bring her in through the side entrance. I’ll meet you there.”

“Thank you.”

* * *

Stiles wasn’t firing on all cylinders, that was never more apparent than when he crashed Gemma’s caddy into a guard rail without first checking if the coast was clear -- rookie mistake. Unbeknownst to him, an anonymous tip had been called in regarding the vehicle and deputies had arrived just in time to catch him jumping out of the moving car before it slammed into the barrier. On the bright side, he had gorgeous view of the sunrise as the cuffs were being slapped on him and he was shoved into a patrol car.

Typically, being dragged into Charming PD would’ve been a minor inconvenience, but as luck would have it, Stiles had been meaning to drop by and introduce himself to the new chief anyway, so the deputies just saved him a trip.

“Mieczysław-Nathaniel Stilinski,” An unrecognizable woman in a tan police-issued uniform approached after he’d had his mug shot and his fingers printed. “Did I pronounce that correctly?”

“You did, actually,” Stiles would be impressed by that feat later, for now they had business to attend to. “Chief Jody Mills, I presume.”

“That’s what my name tag says,” She quipped, obviously having more of a lighthearted personality than her predecessor. “I met your father recently. He said you wouldn’t be shy about making your presence known to me. Didn’t mention anything about handcuffs or a police report, though.”

“Oh, this?” Stiles held up the metal bracelet-clad wrists. “This is a misunderstanding.”

“So you didn’t intentionally crash a car registered to Gemma Teller-Morrow?”

“No, I did,” Stiles admitted, determining that, for once, honesty might be the best policy. “There were extenuating circumstances.”

“I’d love to hear them,” Chief Mills gave him the floor to lay bare Gemma’s devastating secret. “You can tell me now or we can wait until your father gets here.”

“Technically, you shouldn’t be talking to be at all without my dad or a lawyer present,” Stiles was still a minor after all. “Wait. You already called my dad?”

“I was just about to.”

“Don’t do that. Please. He’s busy. He’s doing something really important right now,” The last thing his dad or Gemma needed was to hear that Stiles had been arrested. “Look, you, um, you’re one of Bobby Singer’s people, right? You know about thing things that go bump in the night? You know how to keep a secret, like, a really big secret?”

“I do,” The chief furrowed her brows. “Does this have something to do with a case Bobby or the Winchesters are working?”

“No. No, I wish it was a simple as that,” No, the kind of horror Gemma experienced was in entirely human form of torture. “You need to know what happened, because you are in a very influential position power here, and the bastards responsible will reach out to you to get you on their side. You need to know, because you’re a woman, and if you’re not swayed by them, they’ll probably do to you what they did to her.”

“To Mrs. Teller-Morrow?” Chief Mills questioned, face creased with concern. “What exactly are we talking about here, Mr. Stilinski?”

“There can’t be an official report,” A paper trail would only complicate things when the club eventually found out and went looking for revenge. “She doesn’t want people to know, especially not Jax or Clay.”

“But, as you said, I need to know,” She reminded him, reaching out to unlock the handcuffs and slip them off his wrists. “Why don’t you tell me what happened, and we can go from there.”

“My dad and I can’t be here all the time to protect her. Someone here has to know,” Someone, besides he and his father, needed to be aware of the threat looming over Charming—who better than the chief of police? “You have to know so you can protect her, but it can’t be official, and she can’t know that you know. If she knew I told you…”

“You’re trying to protect your mother, I get it,” Chief Mills acknowledged sympathetically. “I want to help, Stiles. I can treat it as I would a supernatural case, nothing official would be filed. But I can’t help you or your mother unless I know what happened.”

“Okay,” He just hoped like hell that Jody Mills was as trustworthy as Bobby had painted her out to be. “It’s too, uh, too crowded here. Too many deputies and suits coming and going.”

“Yeah, the feds are setting up shop. I’m not completely sure what that’s all about, they’re keeping me in the dark,” Chief Mills grumbled bitterly. “Let’s go in my office, it’s quieter, we’ll have some privacy.”

“Okay.”

* * *

They found Olivia Lowry on the floor of her home, drenched in blood; the EMF meter clutched in the hands of her mutilated corpse suggested some kind of spirit was responsible for the carnage. Derek wasn’t an expert on vengeful spirits, but it was hard for him to believe a run of the mill ghost was able to outwit and overpower a seasoned hunter armed with methodically placed salt-lines and a full arsenal. And, unfortunately, as they soon learned, Olivia wasn’t the only victim.

After failing to make contact with other hunters nearby, they decided to split into groups of two to do a couple welfare checks. Sam and Dean were sent to Jackson to check on a hunter named Jed, while Derek and his father looked in on R.C. Adams and Carl Bates, each of whom had been redecorated in red by the time they got there.

“They were killed in their own homes,” Derek noted, slumping in the passenger seat of the Chevelle. “They weren’t on hunts. They were…off duty.”

“I know, son.”

“That doesn’t add up with anything you’ve taught me about vengeful spirits,” Ghosts haunted the place they died or places they had a strong connection to when they were alive; they didn’t wander aimlessly or have free reign over the world. “Unless your hunter friends all ended up buying homes where someone died violently.”

“They would have cleansed the houses before moving in,” His dad remarked, tired eyes staring at the long road ahead of them. “I don’t know what’s doing this, but it ain’t no vengeful spirit.”

“You think it’s connected to Dean’s resurrection?” As this point, Derek thought it was safe to assume anything too out of the ordinary from the usual strangeness could be associated with Dean’s return in one way or another. “If angels and God really stepped in to save one of their strongest warriors, maybe whatever this is, is the demon or the devils answer to it. Retaliation.”

“This ain’t Dean’s fault.”

“I didn’t say it was,” Derek wouldn’t blame Dean for something he had no control over. “But we can’t pretend everything going on with Sam and Dean is going to have a neat answer tied in a bow. Heaven’s involved itself, Hell’s not just going to sit idly by, is it?”

“What do you mean: _**Sam**_ and Dean?” His dad grunted. “Sam up to something I don’t know about?”

“I don’t think he’s been honest about what he was doing this summer,” In fact, Derek knew Sam hadn’t been entirely forthcoming about how or what he extracted from the demons his loyal crows had captured for him in their quest to bring Dean home. “And Jax and Opie are protecting him.”

“You seem pretty sure about that,” The hunter growled, fingers flexing around the steering wheel. “Something you need to tell me?”

“No,” Not when they had more pressing matters to contend with. “You really think going back to your place is the best idea right now? These ghosts are hitting hunters where they live.”

“You forget about the safe room in the basement?”

“You think that’s going to be strong enough to keep these things out?”

“It better be.”

* * *

The last time John had sat beside someone he cared about in a cold hospital room following their sexual assault, it’d been Stiles curled up on the bed. His son had already been hospitalized post-surgery when what was left of his innocence and childhood had been stripped away from him. Stiles had been so heavily sedated preceding and following the incident that he was in and out of consciousness for days, a small mercy, perhaps. By the time the boy had fully come back to himself, his body had already begun to mend from the wreckage that would take his mind months, years even, to sift through.

In contrast, Gemma was completely present and in the moment. The SAMCRO matriarch was painfully aware of every ache and twinge, scrape and bruise. Unlike their son who was able to find a small amount of peace in unconscious oblivion, Gemma had no escape from the physical, psychological, and emotional damage that had been inflicted upon her.

“You keep scowling at my grandson like that, I’m gonna start getting offended,” Gemma mumbled, scrutinizing him from the hospital bed she was resting on. “He need a diaper change or something?”

“What?” John shook himself out of his stupor and gave the infant on his lap a quick sniff. “No, he’s fine. I was just…thinking.”

“Your thinking face looks suspiciously like our son’s brooding-but-still-plotting-someone’s-demise face,” Gemma made a half-hearted attempt to be playful and teasing, but for the most part it fell flat. “Don’t take this on, baby.”

“How can I not, Gem?” Their son had brought her to him for a reason, and it wasn’t so he could just sit on his hands. “You have to give me something here, Gemma. I need to know what I’m dealing with.”

“You’re dealing with me,” Gemma asserted as she smoothed out the crinkles on the paper hospital gown. “That is the only part of this that touches you or the boy. You both will stay out of the rest of it. You understand me?”

“If you give me a description of who did this to you, I can investigate,” He was going to investigate either way, he just preferred to have something to go on. “You don’t want to tell Clay or Jax, I understand that. You want to protect them—“

“You’re damn right I do,” Gemma huffed, digging her nails into her palms. “If they knew what happened…why it happened…the guilt and the anger would level them. They’d be blind to everything but their rage, and they’d play right into those sons of bitches hands.”

“They’d play right into the hands of the men who did this?” That was a far more telling statement than John had expected from her. “What’re you talking about, Gem?”

“All this…” Gemma gestured to her injuries. “This wasn’t about me.”

“Yeah, that much I’m clear on.”

“What those animals did was to hurt Clay and Jax, to break ‘em,” Gemma sniveled. “Anyone finds out… They win. I can’t let that happen.”

“Clay and Jax don’t have to know anything,” The ‘yet’ was left unsaid, but sat heavily between them. “Just tell me who ‘they’ are.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Gemma dismissed the request. “The only thing that matters is protecting my family.”

“You need to think about protecting yourself, Gemma.”

“That’s what you’re here for, baby.”

“I could protect you better if I knew who I was protecting you from.”

“If I told you that, you wouldn’t be able to let it go.”

* * *

The novelty of being home was already wearing thin, which was saying something considering how long Jax had actually been home. It wouldn’t have been so bad if Dean was there with him, or if he wasn’t being ambushed with bullshit from all sides when all he was trying to do was get a cup of coffee from the clubhouse kitchen.

“You want to explain to me what the fuck you think you were doing yesterday?” Clay snarled, slamming his own mug down next to Jax’s. “Alvarez found the Niner you and Opie visited. He was throwing up nine fingers. Browns a little pissed at black.”

“I made a decision,” And Jax stood by that decision, for better or worse. “For the good of the club.”

“Uh huh,” Clay’s nostrils flared. “You settle that shit on your own?”

“Spur of the moment, seemed like the right thing," Jax shrugged, spying little brother out of the corner of his eye, shuffling into the clubhouse. “I’m sure you can understand, Clay.”

“Hey,” Stiles shouldered his way into the small kitchen. “I tried calling.”

“Didn’t I tell you to stay the fuck out of my clubhouse?” Clay shoved the kid roughly against the wall. “I told you what would happen—“

“Back off!” Jax yanked Clay back by his kutte. “He wouldn’t subject himself to you unless it was fucking important.”

“I was at Charming PD introducing myself to the new chief, trying to get a feel for her, you know,” Stiles didn’t allow Clay’s outburst to deter him from saying what he came to say. “The feds are there, settling in for the long haul. As I was leaving, I overheard them talking about how they raided LuAnn’s studio. Asset seizure.”

“God damn it!” Clay shouted, kicking the stove in frustration. “They probably wiped her out to punish Otto for the beating he put on Stahl.”

“That’s probably a safe bet,” Stiles uncharacteristically agreed with their stepfather. “Otto’s gonna be pissed, rightfully so, when he finds out you guys aren’t looking out for his old lady like you promised him you would.”

“How the fuck we were supposed to know about federal raid?” It’s not like Jax or the club had an ‘in’ with Charming PD anymore, or with the feds for that matter. “Me and Ope will go talk to Otto.”

“Opie goes with Tig today,” Clay made his plans to separate Jax and Ope known. “Take Bobby with you, he could use the fresh air.”

“I’ll go by myself,” Jax was more than capable of making the trip to Stockton on his own. “I’ll be back in a few hours. I’ll let you know what he says.”

“There’s one more thing,” Stiles stopped him before he could leave. “On my way home last night, I saw a wreck in the road. It was Gemma’s car.”

“What?” Clay accosted the teenager once more, grabbing two handfuls of his shirt. “You’re just bringing this up now?’

“Hey! He said he tried to call!” Jax snapped, forcing his stepfather to break the hold on his brother. “If it was that bad he would have led with it.”

“She’s a little banged up, but she’ll be fine,” Stiles attempted to quell their fears. “She got tired while she was driving, accidently ran the caddy into a barrier.”

“Where is she?” Clay demanded answers as to his wife’s whereabouts. “St. Thomas?”

“She wouldn’t let me take her to St. Thomas. She didn’t want to go to the hospital at all,” Stiles said, growing agitated as he continued. “I thought she might have a concussion from her head hitting the steering wheel, so I took her to my dad. He convinced her to go to Beacon Hills Memorial to be checked out. When I talked to Dad a little bit ago, he said they ran some tests, told him to keep an eye on her, and released her. She’s at our house resting. Dad’s taking care of her.”

“Why didn’t you just bring her home?” Clay questioned, staring daggers at the kid. “Or bring her here?”

“Someone has to keep an eye on her, she has a _**concussion**_ ,” Stiles retorted, putting emphasis on Gemma’s injuries. “You guys run off to do club crap every five minutes. She’d be alone if I’d brought her here.”

“We wouldn’t just leave her alone after she’s been in an accident,” Clay bristled. “One of the girls would watch her if we had to go out.”

“Oh, well, if it’s a choice between my dad and a croweater, let’s think about that,” Stiles brought his index finger to his lips. “Yeah, I think she’d choose my dad every time.”

“We’ll see about that,” Clay sneered. “I’m gonna go get her.”

“If she wanted to see you,” Stiles snickered. “She would have called you.”

“Okay,” Jax stepped between them. “Let’s give Gem a few hours of space to recover on her own terms before we think about going to get her.”

“That’s a fantastic idea,” Stiles praised, patting his brother on the back. “By the way, my dad’s got Abel to, if you were wondering where he was.”

“Don’t fucking start with me.”

* * *

Derek wasn’t itching to be locked in a confined space for an undetermined amount of time, and his father wasn’t either if they way he darted for the study as soon as they walked through the door was anything to go by. Derek, on the other hand, had ambled back outside, deciding to go on a quick run around the property to allow his wolf to stretch his legs after being cooped up in the car for so long. He made it a third of the way through the junkyard before a startling sight stopped him in his tracks.

“Erica…”

She looked just as she had the last time he’d seen her, from the clothes she was wearing to the pitying expression on her face. The only thing missing was the hand that had been clasped in hers the night she fled into the darkness of the preserve.

“Where’s Boyd?’ Maybe that wasn’t the right question to start with. “How did you get here? Who told you I was here?”

“I don’t have to be told where you are,” Erica remarked coyly. “You’re my alpha. I can sense you.”

“That’s not how it works,” They could sense each other, yes, but it wasn’t a locator beacon. “It can’t lead us to each other. If it could, I would’ve found you and Boyd.”

“We didn’t want to leave, Derek,” Erica confessed with a heavy sigh. “I just didn’t want to die before I had a chance to get my driver’s license or go to prom.”

“I don’t want that to happen either,” Derek could admit his mistake in offering the bite to a couple of teenagers too young to accept the price of it. “I understand why you and Boyd left, but things are different now. Gerard and Victoria are dead. The Argents are crippled. It’s safe for you to come home.”

“Safe?” Erica scoffed. “We’re not safe. We were never safe. We were dead the moment you chose us as your pack.”

“No,” Derek refused to believe he damned his new pack as he had his family. “I was trying to help you. All of you.”

“You were trying to help yourself. It was never about us,” Erica was quick to counter. “Your dick got your family killed so you needed a new one. We were just easy marks.”

“I was trying to help,” He’d chosen them because they needed something he could give them, his intentions weren’t as nefarious as everyone thought. “You don’t have to believe that, but you need to believe me when I tell you that you and Boyd can’t survive on your own. You need to come back. You need your pack.”

“Oh, we found a new pack to take us in,” Erica hissed. “It was just our luck that it was you they wanted. Me and Boyd, we were just a means to an end to them, but you never came for us like they thought you would… Like we thought you would.”

“The alpha pack?” If that were the case, they wouldn’t have just let her go when Derek didn’t show. “How did you get away?”

“I didn’t, but damn if I didn’t try,” Erica skimmed her manicured nails across her throat. “And they just dumped what was left of me in a janitor’s closet like some dirty mop.”

“What was left of you...” A sinking feeling settled in Derek’s gut. “You’re not really here. You’re dead.”

“I thought I could take ‘em,” She chuckled darkly. “Guess I wasn’t as strong as you said I’d be after I took the bite.”

“I’m sorry,” He could have spent more time training her, but it wouldn’t have made a difference, she never would have been strong enough to take on a pack of alphas on her own. “Is Boyd—“

“Don’t worry your broody little head about him,” Erica clucked her tongue. “He and little sister have fared better than me.”

“Little sister?”

“Cora.”

“You’ve seen her? You’ve seen Cora?”

“Oh, yeah. Baby sister’s alive and well. Congratulations,” She applauded him. “Too bad you’ll never get a chance to see her.”

“Because you’re gonna kill me,” Derek knew what the game was now; she was a ghost appearing to him in a place he considered his home, just like the vengeful spirits knocking off hunters. “That’s why you’re here, right? You want me dead?”

“You shouldn’t have let me run, Derek,” Erica growled, brandishing her claws. “You’re the reason the alpha pack tore me to shreds. You let them do it.”

“I searched for you,” Derek had done everything in his power to locate her and Boyd, it just wasn’t enough. “We all searched for you. Me and Isaac, Peter and Stiles. We couldn’t find you. I couldn’t find you. I’m sorry.”

“’Sorry’ doesn’t give back the life you took from me.”

“Killing me won’t give it back either.”

“Maybe not, but it’s still gonna feel really fucking cathartic.”

* * *

Stiles held it together pretty well since finding Gemma in that utility shed, or, you know, so he thought. Honestly, the only reason he hadn’t cracked was because he’d been able to keep himself busy by focusing on how he could help Gemma rather than what happened to her. It was when he was readying himself for the return trip to Beacon Hills that his focus began to waver.

It started as soon as he’d left the clubhouse and noticed a car pull out behind him, it wouldn’t have raised his hackles if not for the fact that the mystery vehicle also took every single turn he took from there on out. Stiles was forced to implement every evasive maneuver his father had taught him just to shake the tail, by the time he managed it, his nerves were shot. For his own safety, as well as the safety of his fellow motorists on the road, he decided to take temporary refuge at Juice’s house until he could trust himself to drive.

The quiet of Juice’s place was supposed be a calming, peaceful place for him to catch his breath. Instead, it provided the perfect environment for his anxiety to fester and his mind to wander into the darkest recesses of his memory.

“ _You bleed so pretty,”_ She purred into his ear. _“It’s almost as delicious as your tears.”_

“Stop,” Stiles shivered, feeling the ghost of her breath on his face. “I don’t want this. Leave me alone.”

“ _You’re gonna be so gorgeous when you’re all grown up,”_ She hummed, nuzzling his neck. _“We’ll be together for real then. We won’t have to hide anymore. Won’t have to wait for your dad to leave for work. Won’t have to sneak off to a cheap motel. We’ll finally be free to be together out in the open. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”_

“No,” _ **Freedom**_ wasn’t a word he could ever associate with her; he’d never escape her, no matter how old he got or how tightly she was locked up, he’d always be her victim. “Please go away.”

“ _We’ll go away. We’ll go somewhere far away, where no one will ever find us,”_ She murmured softly, lips brushing his cheek with every word she spoke. _“Just the two of us.”_

“Aunt Sloan, please. Please stop,” Stiles pleaded with her. “Just leave me alone. I don’t want this. I don’t want you. I never did.”

“ _It’ll just be you and me,”_ She whispered as her cold hand slithered up his thigh. _“It will always be you and me. You’ll always be mine. For the rest of our lives, you’ll be mine.”_

“No!”

“Stiles?” Juice’s concerned voice filtered into his consciousness. “Are you okay?”

“What?” Stiles blinked, at last the memory fading into the far reaches of his mind where it would continue to lurk until the day he died. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine.”

“You sure?” Juice asked, head tipped to the side as he studied Stiles. “Sounded like you were talking to yourself when I came in.”

“I didn’t hear you come in,” Stiles grasped at anything he could in an effort to steer the conversation away from himself. “It’s early. Shouldn’t you be at the garage?”

“Came to get my bat,” Juice said as he grabbed the wooden club from where it was leaning against the wall beside the front door. “We gotta pay a visit to some porn producer named Georgie Caruso. He’s been hassling LuAnn and her girls.”

“Be careful.”

“You sure you’re okay?” Juice hesitated, hand hovering over the doorknob. “Heard about Gemma’s accident. You found her, huh?”

“Yep, I did,” It’d only been a few hours ago, but fuck if it didn’t feel like it’d been days. “She’ll be all right. She’s with my dad, he’s taking care of her.”

“Yeah, Clay’s on a rampage about that.”

“Sorry.”

“You need me for something?” Juice inquired, confusion marring his features. “Did I forget about plans we made to meet for an early lunch or…?”

“Oh, uh, no,” Stiles supposed it was a little odd of him to have let himself into Juice’s house uninvited without even giving the man a courtesy call to let him know he’d be there, even if they were seeing each other. “I’ve been up all night. I was gonna go home and crash, but I got drowsy on the road. Your place was closest.”

“You should take a nap,” Juice suggested, using the bat to gesticulate toward the bedroom. “I don’t want you to get into an accident ‘cause you were tired like Gem.”

“Trust me, that is the last thing I want,” Especially when the sons of bitches responsible for Gemma’s ‘accident’ were still out there somewhere.” Yeah, I might do that—take a nap, that is.”

“I can stay,” Juice volunteered. “You seem a little…unsteady. Maybe you shouldn’t be alone.”

“You have club stuff to do,” Stiles wasn’t about to confirm what the Sons already thought, that he was going to try to use his new position in Juice’s life to put distance between Juice and the club. “I’m fine. Plus, if you don’t show up, Jax’ll get suspicious.”

“He’s already suspicious of us.”

“Great.”

* * *

Dean knew this case would not be like the others when the victims were hunters targeted in their own homes, Sam being attacked in a gas station restroom by Wayne Unser of all people only served to prove that point. With that in mind, when dozens of calls to Bobby and Derek went unanswered, they hauled ass back to the Singer property expecting to find nothing but carnage. Naturally, since splitting up had been so effective for them throughout the day, that’s exactly what his brother decided they would do as soon as they pulled into the dirt driveway.

Sam took it upon himself to venture into the junkyard to look for Bobby and Derek, leaving Dean to conduct the same search inside the house. There wasn’t any sign of father or son beyond a fireplace poker lying discarded on the rug, a worrying discovery, sure, but it wasn’t blood. The absence of blood didn’t necessarily mean they hadn’t been attacked, they were strong guys with level heads on their shoulders, they could have easily escaped – Dean nearly hadn’t when Meg came for him.

She didn’t appear as the demon who had preyed on Sam, but as the young woman who’d been possessed. Dean, having been the one to “ _charge in, slashing and burning_ ”, as she so eloquently put it, with no regard for the human girl inhabiting the body, made him the target of her rage. It was him she blamed for her death and in turn, her little sister’s suicide.

Dean would accept full responsibility for his inability to save her, he’d even carry the weight of her sister’s death as it was a direct result of her own, he would carry the guilt, but he wouldn’t allow it or her to kill him the same way the other ghosts had killed the hunters who failed them. For reasons beyond his control, he couldn’t bring himself to shoot Meg full of rock salt, but he could shoot the iron chandelier directly above their heads and dive safely out of the way as it landed on top of her.

The spirit of the girl once known as Meg Masters disappeared into a burst of ash and Dean stumbled out the front door, coughing and spluttering, trying his damndest not to inhale vengeful-spirit particles. Sam met him on the porch, an out of breath Bobby trailing behind him.

“Dean, are you okay?” Sam rushed to his side. “What happened?”

“I just got kicked in the teeth by Meg,” Dean barked as he reloaded his trusty sawed-off, just in case. “You look like crap, Bobby. What ghost of Christmas past came back to haunt you?”

“The twins from the Shining,” Bobby grumbled. “Where’s Derek?”

“He wasn’t in the house,” Dean hadn’t searched every room, but he liked to think the wolf would’ve come to his aide if he’d heard him in trouble. “He didn’t try to help you?”

“Maybe he couldn’t,” Sam acknowledged, contemplating the situation. “Think about it. Everyone we’ve seen is someone we couldn’t save. There are a lot people in Derek’s life he couldn’t save.”

“Bobby, you came out here to hide, right?” After his close encounter with Meg, Dean couldn’t exactly fault Bobby for taking that route. “Where would Derek hide?”

“His fort,” Bobby reported, steadying himself with a hand on the porch railing. “It was where he would go when he was a kid and another hunter would stop by.”

“Where is it?”

“This way.”

They weaved through the junkyard until they reached the edge of the property where a small shed built out of tires, rusty hoods, and rims was tucked away between rows of crushed cars.

“Derek!” Bobby called out for the wolf as he pried open the makeshift door. “Son?’

The alpha was curled in on himself in the corner of the fort, knees drawn to his chest, eyes coated in that deep red, claws and fangs on full display, his entire body trembling.

“What did you see?” Dean could only imagine that the ghost who had appeared to Derek must have been someone shocking and unexpected to put the wolf in such a state. “ _ **Who**_ did you see?”

“Your mother? Someone from your family?” Sam asked, crouching to Derek’s level. “It’s okay. You can tell us.”

“It was Erica,” Derek grunted, breath catching in his throat. “She’s dead.”

“I’m sorry, son,” Bobby extended a hand to his boy, a consoling gesture was that was ultimately rebuffed. “Come on. We need to get to the safe room.”

“She had a mark. A brand,” Derek revealed as he crawled out of the fort. “It was on her hand. She didn’t have it when she was alive.”

“Unser had one too.”

“So did Meg.”

* * *

In spite of all his flaws, Gemma loved her husband. Clay had given her the one thing JT couldn’t: loyalty. Clay’s biggest fault, second only to his ego, was that he didn’t always known when to respect her wishes, specifically when it came to giving her space.

She wasn’t all the surprised when he came calling for her at Johnny’s; her being there at all was more than enough to draw her husband’s ire. What did give her pause, however, was Clay’s almost cordial attitude toward Johnny when he answered the door, which had more to do with wanting access to her than anything else. Make no mistake, if Clay had shown up making demands to see her, Johnny would have shut the door in his face, but since he’d been as close to respectful as a man like Clay could be, John had allowed him inside to see her.

“I’ll be in the kitchen,” John excused himself from the tense room, although not before offering her an out, should she require it. “Shout if you need anything.”

“We’ll be fine,” Gemma assured him, receiving a nod in response as he retreated from the living room. “I’m okay, Clay.”

“I’ll be the judge of that,” He husband remarked, lifting her chin with his calloused hand to see to her injuries, just as Johnny had done that morning. “Goddamn.”

“Air bag,” She lied, adding credence to the story Stiles had concocted. “It’ll heal.”

“You’ll heal better at home,” Clay decided, wrapping his arms around her and urging her to her feet. “Come on. You’ll be more comfortable in your own bed.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” She batted him away, scooting to the farthest end of the sofa to get some separation. “I’m not up for that ride, baby. I’m sorry.”

“I’ll call one of the guys to bring up the van.”

“No,” She wasn’t ready to leave the safe haven of the Stilinski house just yet. “I’m tired, Clay. I’m in pain. I don’t want to ride on the back of your bike or be cramped up in the passenger seat of the van. I just want to rest.”

“And you have to do that _**here**_?” Clay glowered. “With him?”

“Hey, I didn’t ask Stiles to bring me here,” She was thankful her youngest son had, though. “But I’m here, and I’m not going anywhere any time soon.”

“I can come get you tonight,” Clay made the mistake of thinking they were negotiating. “They’ll give you a few hours to rest.”

“I’ll be home in a few days,” That was the best she could do. “I’ll have Stiles bring me when I’m ready.”

“Fine.” Her husband fumed, and because he had the emotional maturity of a five year old, he proceeded to stomp out of the house, slamming the door closed with a resounding _**thud**_.

“Gem?” Johnny slipped in from the hall, as if he’d been standing guard there the whole time. “Sounds like that went well.”

‘It’s not his fault he doesn’t understand,” She was the one keeping the truth from him, but she maintained it was for his own good. “If you’re gonna try to convince me to tell him…”

“I’m not,” He promised, face pinched in concern. “But you and I both know secrets like these, they’re poison to keep.”

“All secrets are poison, baby.”

* * *

It was possible, likely even, that having the dead come knocking to punish them for past transgression had shaken them more than any of them would care to admit. It’d certainly challenged their focus. Dean couldn’t concentrate on the book that could potentially hold the answers to their vengeful spirit problem when he was busy watching the safe room door in case it didn’t hold, a quick glance to his brother showed him in a similar state. Bobby was the only one of them actively doing any research whatsoever, studying three books at once from the looks of things. And Derek, well, he seemed to be distracted by the circular walls of their ~~cell~~ safe room.

The wolf had been in a world all his own since they’d found him in his fort. Dean understood Derek was processing the loss of his beta, but he couldn’t help but sense there was something more going on. Derek’s mood, his behavior, it tugged at every single one of Dean’s big brother instincts until he couldn’t take it anymore.

“Okay,” Dean abandoned the book he’d been pretending to read and shifted his body toward the kid, turning his back on Sam and Bobby to give them a semblance of privacy in their cramped quarters. “I know we’re all on edge, but, uh, I don’t think you’re all here right now. Your head’s somewhere else.”

“So?” Derek shrugged. “We all have other stuff going on.”

“No, this isn’t other stuff,” It was connected to the case somehow, Dean was sure about that. “You’re holding something back about what you saw. Whatever it is, you can tell me. You can tell us. I mean, look, we’re all in the same boat here. We know why we’re being targeted. There’s nothing you can say that’s going to make us run away screaming.”

“There’s an alpha pack in Beacon Hills. They want me to kill my pack and join them, or they’ll kill us all,” In a surprising show of trust, Derek confided in him about the enemies and conflict he’d been contending with over the summer. “They killed Erica. They still have Boyd…and my little sister.”

“Your sister?” That was a twist Dean wasn’t prepared for, but he could roll with it. “Okay. Okay, we deal with our ghost problem first, then we go get your sister and Boyd.”

“It’s not your problem.”

“I’m not gonna let you do it alone,” That wasn’t how things worked in their family. “I’m not taking no for an answer, so you might as well go along with it.”

“Found it,” Bobby blurted out, vaulting out of his chair. “The symbol you saw—the brand on the ghosts, it’s the mark of the witness.”

“Witness?” Sam raised his brows. “Witness to what?”

“The unnatural. None of them died what you’d call ordinary deaths,” Bobby explained. “See, the ghosts, they were forced to rise. They woke up angry. They were like rabid dogs. It ain’t their fault. Someone rose them on purpose.”

“Who?” Dean, Sam, and Derek asked in unison.

“Do I look like I know?” Bobby snarked, snapping the book closed. “Whoever it was used a spell so powerful it left a mark, a brand on their souls. Whoever did this has big plans. It’s called ‘ _the rising of the witnesses_ ’. It figures into an ancient prophecy.”

“Wait. Wait.” Dean had a bad feeling about where all this was going, and where it was coming from. “What-what book is that prophecy from?”

“Well, I know being fondled by an angel’s made you a little touchy about the subject, but try to contain yourself,” The elder hunter advised him. “The widely distributed version’s just for tourists, you know. But long story short – Revelations. This is a sign, boys.”

“A sign of what?”

“The apocalypse.”

* * *

Jax had to wonder how far SAMCROs reputation had fallen in his time away if drawing a clear line for some douchebag porn producer didn’t make the asshole run for the motherfucking hills. As it was, Georgie had taken their show of force, and rather than getting out of town, as he should have, he chose to escalate the situation, sending his goons to rough up one of LuAnn’s girls as a message to the club. Jax and the club had responded in kind, taking a more physical approach to threatening the man. Jax would’ve liked to think beating the fuck out of the guy would be the end of it, but the fact of the matter was, Georgie Caruso was just a small part of a much bigger problem for LuAnn.

“There’s a ton of guys like Georgie out there. If LuAnn can’t pay her talent, they’ll keep coming…so to speak,” Jax chortled and went on to remind his club of the significant debt they owed Otto’s old lady. “That’s why she wants her 50k back.”

“That’s not gonna happen,” Clay shot down any talk of repaying the money LuAnn loaned them months ago to pay the IRA.

“Obviously, but we can offer her something else: a partner,” Jax had anticipated how his stepfather would feel about that and planned his argument accordingly. “The empty gun warehouse, it’s the same size as Caruso films.”

“All the sudden you’re Larry Flint?” Clay snorted, stubbing out his cigar. “No.”

“That’s not your decision,” Piney objected to their charter president’s quick dismissal of the proposed new business venture. “Club business, club vote, club decision.”

“Georgie’s just a scumbag with muscle and a lease, right? His staff and talent do all the work. We already have staff and talent: LuAnn,” In its own way, that would make them the scumbags with muscles and lease, not that Jax minded given the payday it would likely incur. “We offer her protection, a space, front her a little cash – that we already owe her – for the shit the feds took, split the profits.”

“I can upgrade her internet shit,” Juice offered up his computer skills to enhance their profits. “There’s plenty of room for servers in that space. And that’s where the real cash is.”

“You really want to keep your mouth shut here, Juice,” Clay cautioned the younger man. “Unless you want Jax to learn all about your extracurricular with baby brother.”

“Huh?” For the sake of his sanity, Jax really should have let it go, but he wasn’t nearly as smart as he liked people to think he was. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

“That’s personal business between Juice and Stiles,” Piney must’ve been feeling feisty, he usually didn’t interject to challenge Clay so consistently throughout the same meeting. “You don’t get to use it to threaten Juicy into voting your way.”

“It’s the _**bowchickawowow**_ kinda business,” Tig stage-whispered across the table. “Get it?”

“I do now,” Jax said, shifting his attention to Stiles’…dancing partner. “You been screwing my little brother while I was away?”

“I thought we were talking about porn?” Juice held his hands out in front of him defensively. “The girl-on-girl kind, not… -- You know, Chibs had an excellent eye for casting.”

“Aye, I do,” Chibs grinned, clapping Juice on the back. “Giving LuAnn a hand wouldn’t be a hardship for me.”

“I’m sure,” Clay rolled his eyes. “Clubs get into trouble when they take on too much.”

“It’s a legitimate business,” Not to mention with their gun business being downsized, they were going to need the extra income. “We run it clean, feds think we turned over a new leaf, they go away.”

“I don’t think getting the feds off our asses is going to be that simple,” Opie commented. “But at the very least, this porn shit’ll get Bobby Elvis laid.”

“Thoughts?” Jax opened the floor to his brothers.

“Everybody loves pussy.”

“Gemma’s gonna love this,” Clay grumbled, fingers twitching over the gavel. “You can tell her all about your big plan to become porn king tonight, when you go get her and bring her home.”

“I’ll go see Gem, but I’m not bringing her home if it’s not where she wants to be,” Jax wouldn’t drag her home against her will, even if he wanted to she’d never allow it. “Gemma’s not club business, she’s personal. We’re not supposed to mix personal with business. Personal business gets handled outside the chapel, that’s why I’m waiting until we’re done here to take Juicy into the garage to have a very fucking personal conversation about my little brother.”

“You’re in enough trouble with Stiles as it is, making a run at Juice is only going to make things worse, and that’d be true whether they were going steady or not,” Piney drawled, stepping in to protect the boys, just as he had since they were kids. “Besides, your brother ain’t your property. You don’t control who he sees or who he shares his bed with. You’re gonna leave Juicy alone.”

“I love you, Piney.” Juice sagged in his chair, breathing a sigh of relief. “Thank you.”

“Don’t think he got you off the hook. He just saved you a beating,” That was about as much latitude as Jax was willing to give. “You, me, and Stiles are gonna have this out real fucking soon.”

“But…why?” Juice whined.

“Because I said so,” Because, apparently, somewhere along the lines, Jax had turned into his mother. “Because it’s fuckin’ weird.”

“Weird?”

“Not weird-weird, just…uncomfortable. It’s uncomfortable for me.” Jax couldn’t get right with it until he knew what the fuck was really going on. “’Cause you’re both my brothers in different ways.”

“Pretty sure Stiles felt the same way about you and Dean,” Opie noted, jumping into the fray. “Or he would have, if he’d been a little older when you two got together.”

“You’re supposed to be on my side,” Jax scowled at his supposed best friend/brother. “Why’re you taking theirs?”

“Donna would have.”

“That’s a dirty play.”

“It’s the truth.”

“I know it.”

* * *

Stiles was living a day that wouldn’t end, it’d started the previous night and if the loud sobs of a wailing infant that greeted him as soon as he trudged through the door were an indicator, it wasn’t quite finished with him yet. He couldn’t help but be disappointed to hear the baby’s cries, Abel had been sleeping through the night for a few months now and it was well past his usual bed time, there was absolutely no reason for him to be up so late.

“What’s wrong with him?” Stiles asked his father who was employing the ole rock-and-walk technique to soothe the baby. “Why’s he still awake?”

“He’s been fed. He’s been changed. I’d say he just wants to be held, but…” His dad sighed, exhaustion etched in to the lines on his face. “I think he’s picking up on all the tension and negative emotions.”

“Here, let me take him,” Stiles presence wouldn’t ease the discomfort his nephew was feeling, but he could give his father a well deserved break. “I’ll see if I can get him down.”

“If you’re sure.” His father handed the baby off to him, looking visibly relieved to have his hands free. “You know, I expected you home hours ago.”

“I needed some time to…decompress, I guess,” He couldn’t lie or play it cool with his father as he’d done with Juice. “My head was… It was in a bad place. I didn’t feel comfortable driving.”

“Sloan?”

“Her-Her voice, h-her-hands, her lips,” Stiles quivered, cradling his nephew protectively against his chest. “I can feel her. It won’t…it won’t leave me alone. _**She**_ won’t leave me alone.”

“With everything going on with Gemma, it’s natural that you’d reflect on your own trauma—“

“Where is Gemma?”

“On the back porch smoking a cigarette,” The older man motioned to the far end of the house. “Stiles, please don’t change the subject. This is serious. You need to talk about it.”

“It’s not that bad, Dad. Honest.” Okay, maybe that anywhere near the realm of honesty, and unfortunately they both knew it. “I’m just… I’m scared. I’m scared that when Sloan gets out, she’ll come for me. I’m fucking terrified that the monsters who hurt Gemma will find her and do it again. I’m just… I’m so scared… I couldn’t even drive because I was so scared.”

“Sloan is not getting out, Stiles. She’s not coming for you. I call every morning to make sure she’s still locked up, that she hasn’t been released or somehow escaped. If she leaves that facility for any reason, son, I will know, and I will do everything humanly possible to make sure she never lays eyes on you ever again,” His father vowed with more conviction than Stiles had ever heard in his voice before. “As for Gemma, I don’t know how to protect her without knowing who to protect her from. Until she’s ready to tell us, all we can do is keep her close, stay with her so she’s never alone.”

“Okay,” Stiles sniffed. “I know I…I could never tell Jax what happened to me, but if feels wrong not telling him about Gem.”

“It’s what she wants, we have to respect that,” His dad acknowledged, and Stiles had a brief recollection of overhearing his father say something similar to Piney when Stiles had been the one assaulted. “I think when the time is right, she’ll tell Jax and Clay, but right now she thinks it would damage them.”

“Break them,” Stiles corrected, seemingly discovering the possible intent behind Gemma’s attack. “You shatter the matriarch, you break the club.”

“She told me it was about the club – Jax and Clay,” His dad revealed. “I assumed it was a sick form of retaliation.”

“No, retaliation is what they want.”

“If the club knows what’s been done to Gemma, they’d be blinded by rage, like she said.”

“Rage makes people stupid, irrational,” Those were two things the club couldn’t afford to be under any circumstances. “They’ll make mistakes that’ll cost them, probably in blood.”

“It would make them easier to take out.”

“Or push out.”

“You think it’s about Charming?”

“I think if killing SAMCRO was their endgame, there are easier ways to do it,” Gang-raping Gemma and setting her loose just didn’t make sense if the plan was to murder the club. “They could’ve used Gemma as a hostage to lure the club in and then slaughtered them all. They didn’t have to hurt her. What they did…it’s the worst thing you could do to another human being. They did it to incite a reaction. A specific kind of reaction. They want to set the club off.”

“We’re not going to why until we know who they are.”

“Therein lies the problem.”

* * *

Once they had a name for the ghosties riding their asses, it wasn’t difficult to find a spell to get rid of them. Of course, performing the ritual wasn’t without its issues, one being having to leave the protection of the safe room, and the other being the witnesses lack of appreciation toward the whole getting rid of them thing. They were so pissed off they tried to go through Bobby – literally – in an effort to stop then, and in the process had grossly underestimated Dean, Sam, and Derek’s protectiveness of the older man.

They managed to free Bobby from the spirit’s grasp and broke off to do what they deemed necessary to get the job done. Derek had pinned himself to his father’s side, guarding him like a hawk, refusing to allow the ghosts to their near him again. Sam had gone toe-to-toe with Meg, he wasn’t stupid enough to try to overpower her, but he did his best to keep her busy while Dean tossed the mixture of the spells ingredients into the lit fireplace, completing the ritual and sending the spirits back to where they came from.

It would have been a more satisfying hunt if they’d had a chance to breathe once the job was finished, but there was still work to be done. Smoke was still billowing from the chimney when they’d piled into the cars and began the trek to Beacon Hills to rescue Derek’s sister and his beta.

“Look, man, I know you’re worried about Cora and Boyd, and I get why you don’t want to talk about it.” That was part of the reason Dean had chosen to ride in the SUV with Derek and made Sam and Bobby follow behind them in the Impala, he was the only one who wouldn’t nag the wolf the whole way to California. “But it’s a long ride, dude, we gotta talk about something.”

“No, we don’t,” Derek grunted, keeping a white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel. “You can turn on the radio if you want.”

“I don’t want to listen to the radio, there are too many commercials. Come on, man, we can find something to talk about,” Dean wasn’t picky about topics so long as it filled the silence, although there was one thing weighing on his mind that he felt comfortable bouncing off the kid. “You believe in God?”

“My mom and her emissary taught us about maintaining a balance of good and evil,” Derek explained, more or less skirting around the question, answering without really answering. “They never really left any room for relying on one deity to be a fix-all while blaming another for all the damage.”

“That makes sense, I guess,” Dean could respect that kind of teaching. “I always thought faith, Heaven and Hell, God and the devil, I thought it was all there to make people feel better.”

“It’s easier to go through life believing bad things happen to good people and there are evil people in the world all because the devil exists,” Derek said thoughtfully. “It’s too hard for some people to accept that we’re all just products of the environment we grew up in and the trauma we’re exposed to.”

“That’s what I’ve always thought too,” Dean had never put much stock in gods or devils because he didn’t need to be coddled by religion to get through the day. “Then I went to hell and was resurrected by an angel.”

“Now your lack of faith is shaken?”

“Something like that, yeah,” Dean hummed as a gust of air blasted through the SUV. “What the—“

“Excellent job with the witnesses,” Castiel spoke from the backseat, startling both passenger and driver.

“You were hip to all that?” That tracked, Dean determined, the higher-ups were always fucking useless. “Well, thanks for the angelic assistance.”

“My dad nearly had his spine ripped out by one of those witnesses,” Derek snarled, glaring at the angel via the rearview mirror.

“But he didn’t,” Castiel showed no concern whatsoever for the elder hunter. “What is the saying, ‘ _all’s well that ends well’_?”

“You know, I thought angels were supposed to be guardians,” Dean scratched his head. “Not dicks.”

“Read the bible. Angels are warriors of God. I’m a soldier. I’m not here to perch on your shoulder,” Castiel clarified his role in a clipped tone. “We have larger concerns.”

“So Bobby was right about the witnesses,” Dean deduced. “They were some kind of sign of the apocalypse.”

“Why else would he be here?” Derek huffed, referring to the angel. “It’s gotta be something big.”

“The abomination is correct,” Castiel gave credit where credit was due. “That’s why we’re here. Big things afoot.”

“Great,” Dean had been expecting that answer, but it still sucked to hear. “Do I want to know what kind of things?”

“I sincerely doubt it,” Castiel’s monotonous tone made it hard to determine if he was being sarcastic or not. “But you need to know.”

“Peter and Stiles are gonna love this guy,” Derek muttered, shaking his head. “Up until he calls them abominations.”

“The rising of the witnesses is one of the 66 seals. You may have put them to rest, but the seal was still broken,” Castiel ignored Derek in favor of giving Dean the information he didn’t want, but apparently needed. “The seals are being broken by Lilith.”

“Why?”

“You can think of seals as locks on a door. Last one opens and…” Castiel paused – for dramatic effect Dean would bet. “Lucifer walks free.”

“Lucifer,” Dean bit back a laugh as he nudged Derek with an elbow. “I take all this back to Jax, he’s gonna laugh in my face. Gemma might have me committed.”

“Why do you think we’re walking among you now, for the first time in 2,000 years?” Castiel questioned, leaning over the center console between Dean and Derek’s seats. “We’ve arrived to stop Lucifer.”

“Well…bang-up job so far.”

* * *

Gemma was an unstoppable force in Jax’s mind. Life had knocked her on her ass more than her fair share of times, but she always pulled herself back to her feet, dusted herself off, and dared the world to come at her again. Jax had always viewed his mother as indestructible, which made it all the more painful to see her injured.

“I did more damage to the airbag than it did to me,” She joked when he expressed his concern. “I’m fine, baby. It looks worse than it is.”

“Next time you’re too tired to drive, call me or one of the guys,” Jax begged his mother as he joined her on the Stilinskis porch. “One of us can take you home. Can you do that, please?”

“If it’ll make you feel better, fine,” She gave in to his demands with little prodding – a shock in itself, to say the least. “You look tired, sweetheart. Long day?”

“You could say that,” Jax murmured, rubbing the stubble on his chin. “Spent most of it trying to help LuAnn with this asshole rival producer. Ended up becoming partners with her so she could get her studio up and running again and we could write off the debt we owe her.”

“SAMCRO’s in the porn business,” An amused grin tugged at Gemma’s lips. “I bet Clay loves that.”

“Doesn’t matter how he feels about it, it was a club vote,” That was the beauty of club politics in a fucking nutshell. “Has he called you tonight?”

“No,” Gemma furrowed her brows. “Why?”

“Mayans ambushed ‘em when they delivering the guns to the Niners,” Jax would have been with them had he not been busying giving LuAnn a tour of her new studio. “Bobby Elvis was shot.”

“Oh, my god.”

“It’s just a shoulder wound,” From what Jax had been told, no vitals had been hit and the bleeding was mostly under control by the time they got Elvis back to the clubhouse. “Chibs is patching him up, says he’ll be fine. I can take you to see him if you want.”

“No,” Gemma swallowed around the lump in her throat and pulled the blanket draped over her shoulders a little tighter around her body. “No, I’ll call him to check in, make sure he’s all right.”

“If you’re sure,” The car accident must have shaken his mother more than Jax initially thought; normally she’d be busting down every door between her and the wounded. “Mom, what are you doing up here?”

“Your brother brought me.”

“Clay came to get you once already,” Chances are Jax’s stepfather would try it again in a day or so. “Said you wanted to rest or something. You can’t do that at home?”

“Charming’s never been restful,” Gemma muttered scornfully. “My grandson is here. I want to be with him. He’s upstairs in Stiles room if you want to look in on him.”

“I don’t think Stiles would like that,” As much as his little brother liked to bitch about Jax not being present for Abel, he sincerely doubted Stiles would let him near the baby if he did try to see him. “I don’t want to wake him anyway.”

“Stiles isn’t even here. He was home long enough to put Abel to bed, then he was out the door again,” Gemma said, gazing at the empty street. “He got a call from Dean about meeting up at Derek’s in the morning to discuss rescuing Derek’s sister or something. Stiles decided to go over there tonight to get Derek’s uncle up to date so they could have a plan ready by the time everyone got into town.”

“Dean’s on his way to Beacon Hills?” That was news to Jax, although he hadn’t spoken much to Dean that day. “He didn’t call me.”

“That’s all you got from what I said?” Gemma chuckled. “You can always stick around and help them out.”

“Yeah, I think I will,” Not only would it give him more time to spend with Dean, but he’d also be able to keep a watchful eye on his mother. “You sure you’re okay?”

“Of course, baby,” She smiled softly. “Always am.”

**Author's Note:**

> Next: The scattered begin to make their way back to Charming and Beacon Hills, but not everyone is welcomed home with open arms. New threats arise as enemies make themselves known and plans are put into motion.


End file.
